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Dessert

Delmonico Pudding

A custard pudding made with milk, eggs, sugar, cornstarch, topped with whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Delmonico Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Scald the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Wet the cornstarch in a little cold milk.

  3. Beat the eggs and sugar together.

  4. Stir the beaten eggs and sugar into the hot milk.

  5. Once cooled, pour the mixture into a dish.

Make the meringue topping

  1. Whip the 3 egg whites until stiff.

  2. Add 3 tablespoons of sugar to the whipped egg whites.

  3. Flavor the whipped egg whites with lemon or vanilla extract.

  4. Spread the whipped egg whites on top of the pudding.

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

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and lemon 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that thickens and sets when heated.
Eggs
Their proteins set when heated, giving the custard body and structure.
Cornstarch
Thickens the hot milk as its starch granules swell and gelatinize.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the topping its light, airy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilize the whipped egg white foam.

The step that matters

Stirring the beaten eggs into the hot milk. Egg proteins can scramble and curdle if they meet hot milk too quickly. Stir steadily and keep the heat moderate so the custard thickens smooth rather than lumpy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, 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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