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Dessert

Charlotte Pudding

A custard pudding made with milk, egg yolks, corn starch, sponge cake slices, and topped with beaten egg whites flavored with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Charlotte Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until boiling.

  2. Stir in the beaten egg yolks and corn starch.

  3. Let the mixture thicken slightly.

  4. Sweeten and flavor to taste.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the sponge cake slices in a pudding dish.

  2. Pour the milk mixture over the sponge cake.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  4. Spread the beaten egg whites on top.

  5. Flavor the egg whites with lemon.

  6. Bake until lightly browned.

  7. Chill before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness as they set with the corn starch.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture so it holds a soft, sliceable body.
Egg whites
Beaten to stiff foam, they form a light topping that puffs and sets when baked.
Sponge cake slices
Soak up the custard and give the pudding a soft, layered structure.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard, providing moisture and a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be beaten to stiff peaks to trap air; under-beaten whites will deflate and spread flat rather than forming a light, browned topping when baked.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, corn, 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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