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Dessert

Delmonico Pudding

A custard pudding made with milk, corn starch, eggs, sugar, topped with jelly or jam and meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Delmonico Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Scald the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Mix the corn starch with cold milk to form a paste.

  3. Stir the paste into the scalded milk along with the salt.

  4. Cook the mixture for 15 minutes. Stir the mixture constantly until smooth.

  5. Add the beaten egg yolks and sugar.

  6. Cook the mixture for an additional 5 minutes.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding dish.

  2. Bake the pudding for 20 minutes.

  3. Remove the pudding from the oven.

  4. Cover the pudding with a layer of jelly or jam.

  5. Top the pudding with meringue.

  6. Return the pudding to the oven.

  7. Brown the pudding slowly.

  8. Serve the pudding hot or cold, with or without whipped cream.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 of the custard, which thickens as it cooks.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk into a smooth, sliceable pudding when heated.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help set the custard as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the flavor.
Meringue
Forms a light, golden topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture constantly until smooth. Cornstarch can scorch on the bottom of the pan and form lumps if left unstirred while heating. Constant stirring keeps the starch dispersed so the custard thickens evenly and stays smooth.

“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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