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Dessert

Delmonico Pudding

A pineapple pudding made with milk, sugar, vanilla, cornflour, ground rice, and egg whites, chilled and topped with pineapple and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 911 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Delmonico Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Mix ground rice and cornflour with the juice from the pineapple.

  2. Add milk and sugar to sweeten, then cook in a double saucepan, stirring constantly to prevent lumps.

Chill and serve

  1. Once slightly cooled, pour into a glass dish and refrigerate until cold.

  2. Top with pineapple chunks and either whipped cream or the whipped egg whites flavored with vanilla essence.

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. Pineapple + vanillatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together911 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Vanilla + ricetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Cornflour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, set custard as its starch swells when heated.
Ground rice
Adds body and a softer, slightly grainy texture to the thickened custard.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that the starches thicken.
Eggs
Whites whipped into a foam give a light, airy topping when used instead of cream.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard to taste.

The step that matters

Stirring constantly while cooking the milk. Starch granules clump when they hit hot liquid before they are evenly dispersed. Constant stirring spreads them out so they thicken smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the pineapple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, vanilla, rice, egg):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, vanilla, rice, egg. 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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