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Dessert

Mountain Dew Pudding

A baked pudding made with milk, eggs, coconut, cracker crumbs, and topped with a sweet meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and coconut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,648 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Mountain Dew Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the pudding

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine milk, egg yolks, coconut, rolled cracker crumbs, and flavor with lemon or vanilla.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake for 30 minutes.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gradually add sugar and continue beating until glossy.

  2. Spread the meringue over the pudding and brown it in the oven.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Coconut + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the pudding sets from.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard base and add richness when baked.
Rolled cracker crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding body and structure.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the light, stable meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the meringue and helps it stay glossy and stable.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Whites must be whipped until stiff and sugar added gradually so the foam holds its shape and does not weep or collapse in the oven. Underbeaten or greasy whites will not form a stable meringue.

Swap the coconut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, lemon, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, lemon, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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