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Dessert

Corn Flour Pudding

A sweet pudding made from corn flour, milk, sugar, and egg, cooked and served in a cup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Flour Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Fill a saucepan halfway with warm water and bring to a boil.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of corn flour to the saucepan.

  3. Gradually pour in ½ pint of milk, mixing until smooth.

  4. Add 6 sugar lumps to the mixture.

  5. Place the saucepan on the heat and stir until it boils, about 10 minutes.

  6. Move the saucepan to the side of the heat.

  7. Break 1 egg into the saucepan and mix well.

Pour and cover

  1. Grease a cup with butter.

  2. Pour the mixture into the greased cup.

  3. Wring out a small cloth in boiling water.

  4. Flour the cloth.

  5. Tie it over the top of the cup with string.

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 as its starch swells and sets in hot liquid.
Milk
Forms the liquid base and adds richness and body to the pudding.
Egg
Sets with gentle heat and helps bind the pudding into a firm, tender texture.
Sugar lumps
Adds sweetness to the mixture.

The step that matters

Stir until the mixture boils. Corn flour thickens only when its starch granules swell in hot liquid. Stopping early or heating unevenly leaves lumps or a thin, starchy texture.

“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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