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Dessert

Corn-starch Pudding

A sweet pudding made from milk, corn starch, egg whites, powdered sugar, and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Corn-starch Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Reserve ½ cup of milk from the quart.

  2. Heat the remaining milk in a double boiler.

  3. Mix corn‑starch and salt with the reserved milk.

  4. Stir the mixture into the boiling milk and beat well for 2 minutes.

  5. Cover the boiler and cook for 12 minutes.

  6. Pour the pudding into a dish and cool for 30 minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. To make the sauce, beat egg whites to stiff peaks.

  2. Mix in powdered sugar until well combined.

  3. Add currant jelly or preserved fruit to the egg mixture.

  4. Serve the pudding with the sauce or with sugar and cream.

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. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  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 + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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-starch
Thickens the milk into a smooth, sliceable pudding as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens into a creamy pudding.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks to form the airy base of the sauce.
Currant jelly
Adds fruity sweetness and bright acidity to the egg-white sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the starch mixture into the boiling milk. Cornstarch must be fully dispersed before it hits hot milk, otherwise it clumps. Beating while it cooks keeps the pudding smooth as the starch swells and thickens.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, corn, 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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