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Tomato-and-Cornflour Pudding

A steamed pudding made from cornflour, milk, tomatoes, and egg, topped with a thickened milk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and arrowroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 159 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Tomato-and-Cornflour Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine cornflour and milk in a saucepan. Stir over heat until thickened and boiling.

  2. Season the mixture with salt, pepper, and nutmeg if using. Add sliced tomatoes and beaten egg, mixing well.

Steam the pudding

  1. Grease a pudding basin and pour in the mixture. Cover the basin with buttered paper.

  2. Place the basin in a saucepan with boiling water, ensuring the water reaches three-quarters up the side. Steam for 1.5 hours.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In another saucepan, mix arrowroot with ½ pint milk and stir over heat until thickened.

  2. Once the pudding is cooked, turn it out onto a hot dish and pour the sauce around it. 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. Nutmeg + arrowroottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together159 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + arrowroottop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together329 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornflour
Thickens the milk into a firm, sliceable set custard base.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornflour thickens into the pudding body.
Beaten egg
Adds structure by setting into the pudding as it steams.
Sliced tomatoes
Provide the main flavour and moisture within the pudding.
Arrowroot
Thickens the sauce to a smooth, glossy consistency.

The step that matters

Stirring the cornflour mixture until boiling. Cornflour only thickens fully once it reaches a boil; stopping early leaves a thin base that will not set firmly when steamed.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, pepper, tomato, egg, butter, arrowroot, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, pepper, tomato, egg, butter, arrowroot, sauce. 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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