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Dessert

Canadian Pudding

A custard and corn flour pudding layered with jam and topped with whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Canadian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Make a custard by heating ½ pint of milk with 4 egg yolks and a little sugar.

Make the corn flour layer

  1. Boil 2 tablespoons of corn flour in 1¼ pint of milk with some sugar until thick.

  2. Let the corn flour mixture cool.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a deep dish, layer jam, custard, and the corn flour mixture.

  2. Whisk 2 egg whites with sifted sugar until stiff, then spread on top of the layers.

  3. Bake until just set and serve in the same dish.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 and a smooth set.
Corn flour
Thickens the milk into a firm, sliceable layer that holds its shape.
Egg whites
Whisked stiff to form a light meringue topping that sets and browns in the oven.
Milk
Forms the base of both the custard and the corn flour layer, adding moisture and body.

The step that matters

Baking until just set. Egg-based custard and meringue turn grainy, watery, or rubbery when overbaked, because the egg proteins tighten and squeeze out liquid. Removing the dish once just set keeps the layers smooth.

“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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