Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
French Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Make the custard
Bring 1 pint of milk to a boil.
Beat the egg whites until very stiff.
Add the beaten egg whites to the boiling milk and stir gently to scald both sides.
Mix 1 tablespoon of cornstarch with a little milk, then add the sweetened egg yolks.
Remove the egg whites from the milk, then add the yolk mixture and boil until it thickens to a custard.
Assemble and serve
In a dish, layer custard, then add dots of egg whites and a macaroon on each dot, followed by another layer of custard. Repeat the layers.
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.
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 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
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base of the custard that thickens when the yolk mixture is added.
- Egg whites
- Whipped to stiffness, they add airy lightness to the pudding and form the soft floating dots.
- Egg yolks
- Thicken the milk into a custard as they heat and set, and add richness.
- Cornstarch
- Stabilises the yolk mixture so the custard thickens smoothly without curdling.
- Macaroons
- Add crisp texture and almond-sweet flavour against the soft custard.
The step that matters
Boil the custard after adding the yolks. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but if the custard is not stirred and brought to a boil it can stay thin or curdle unevenly. Cornstarch helps it set smoothly once boiled.
“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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