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Dessert

Corn Starch Pudding

A sweet milk pudding thickened with corn starch, folded with whipped egg whites, served with a warm egg yolk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Corn Starch Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a double boiler, heat the sweet milk until boiling.

  2. Add the sugar to the boiling milk.

  3. Dissolve the corn starch in a little cold milk, then add it to the mixture.

  4. Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold them into the mixture.

  5. Cook for a few minutes, then pour into tea cups, filling them about half full.

  6. Set the cups in a cool place to set.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, bring 1 pint of milk to a boil.

  2. Add 3 tablespoons of sugar, then stir in the beaten egg yolks thinned with a little milk.

  3. Stir until the sauce thickens, then let it cool.

Serve

  1. Serve each pudding cup with sauce poured over it.

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 + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Corn starch
Thickens the milk into a soft, sliceable set custard as it cooks.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add lightness and airy texture to the pudding.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they cook and add richness and a smooth texture.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens into the pudding.

The step that matters

Stirring the sauce as it thickens. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the sauce gets too hot or is not stirred constantly. Gentle, steady heat and stirring keep the sauce smooth while the yolks thicken it.

“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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