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Dessert

Corn-starch Pudding

A custard-like pudding made from milk, corn starch, eggs, sugar, butter, and flavoring.

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 ↓

Corn-starch Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding base

  1. Heat 1 quart of milk in a saucepan until boiling.

  2. Dissolve 3 tablespoons of corn-starch in a small amount of cold milk.

  3. When the milk boils, stir in the corn-starch mixture, add a pinch of salt, and the butter.

  4. Cook until thick, then remove from heat and stir until cool.

  5. Add the egg yolks and powdered sugar, and flavor with lemon or vanilla.

Finish and bake

  1. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites last.

  2. Pour into a porcelain pudding dish and bake.

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. Corn + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together349 recipes

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

  3. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 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

Corn-starch
Thickens the milk into a smooth custard as it cooks and cools.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and add richness and body to the pudding.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they lighten the pudding and help it rise in the oven.
Milk
Forms the main liquid base that the starch thickens into custard.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the pudding and dissolves smoothly into the warm custard.

The step that matters

Cook until thick, then stir until cool. Cornstarch must be cooked until it boils and thickens fully, or the pudding stays starchy and thin. Stirring while it cools keeps the surface smooth and prevents a skin from forming.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, corn, butter, egg, sugar, lemon):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Lima beansfits about as well
  4. Beansfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, corn, butter, egg, sugar, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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