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Dessert

Brown and Poison’s Souffle Pudding

A sweet corn‑flour and sugar pudding with eggs, butter, and vanilla, baked into a light souffle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Brown and Poison’s Souffle 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 custard

  1. In a saucepan, mix the corn-flour and sugar with the milk.

  2. Add the butter, salt, and essence, and stir until it boils.

  3. Remove from heat and work in the yolks of the eggs.

Bake and serve

  1. Whisk the egg whites until frothy and gently fold them into the mixture.

  2. Pour into a buttered pie dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  3. Sprinkle sugar on top and serve immediately.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 custard that holds the light egg structure.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and set the custard, while whites are whisked to lift the pudding as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the top brown lightly in the oven.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the corn-flour thickens into the custard.
Butter
Adds richness and a soft, smooth texture to the custard.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites hold air only when whisked to a froth and folded in gently. Stirring them hard knocks out the air, so the pudding rises less and turns 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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