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Dessert

Corn Pudding

A baked custard made with corn, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Corn 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 batter

  1. Grate the corn from the cob.

  2. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately.

  3. Combine the corn and egg yolks, then stir in the melted butter.

  4. Add the milk, sugar, and a little salt.

  5. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set, like custard.

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. Butter + sugartop 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

Eggs
Set the pudding into a custard-like texture and add structure, with whipped whites adding lift.
Corn
Provides the main body, sweetness and texture of the pudding.
Milk
Adds moisture and creates the custard base that sets during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, more tender crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding keeps the whipped whites' air in the batter, which helps the pudding rise and stay light. Stirring vigorously would deflate them and make the pudding dense.

“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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