Skip to main content
Dessert

Half Hour Pudding

A baked cornmeal pudding made with butter, sugar, eggs, and cornmeal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Half Hour 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

  2. Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks and mix well.

  4. Stir in the cornmeal.

  5. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gently fold them into the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a well-buttered pudding dish.

  2. Bake for about 30 minutes or until set.

  3. Serve with hot sauce.

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. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whipped whites lighten it and help it rise.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the batter.
Cornmeal
Forms the body of the pudding, giving it its structure and grainy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps create a creamy base when beaten with butter.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold air that lightens the batter. Stirring them in vigorously knocks that air out, leaving a dense pudding, so fold gently and keep the mixture airy.

“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.

More cornmeal pudding recipes

Apple 11Eggless 9Indian 6Boiled 5Molasses 4 See all 145 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes