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Dessert

Baked Pudding

A baked corn flour pudding with milk, optional sugar, and fruit or jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Baked Pudding

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Baked 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.

Make the base

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Gradually add the corn flour while stirring continuously.

  3. Cook for at least 8 minutes until thickened.

Bake and serve

  1. Remove from heat and stir in sultanas, raisins, or jam.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 30 minutes.

  4. Serve warm or chilled.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Corn flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth custard-like base that sets as it cools and bakes.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the corn flour thickens into a creamy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the pudding.
Sultanas or raisins
Add sweetness and chewy fruit pieces throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Adding the corn flour gradually while stirring. Corn flour clumps when dumped into hot liquid, because its starch coats the outside of each grain before it can absorb water. Adding it slowly while stirring keeps the mixture smooth, and cooking it fully lets the starch swell and thicken properly.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, flour, milk, sugar. 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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