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Dessert

Delmonico Pudding

A coconut pudding topped with meringue, baked until light brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and coconut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,648 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Delmonico Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Scald the milk in a farina kettle.

  2. Mix the cornstarch with a little cold milk.

  3. Beat the egg yolks with sugar and stir into the scalding milk.

  4. Add the coconut and pour the mixture into a pudding dish.

Top and bake

  1. Whip the egg whites until stiff, adding 3 tablespoons of sugar and flavoring with lemon or vanilla.

  2. Spread the meringue over the pudding and bake until light brown.

  3. Serve hot or cold with hard sauce.

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 + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Coconut + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 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).

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 base of the pudding, providing liquid that the starch thickens into a custard.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard and whites whip into the meringue topping that sets and browns.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, sliceable custard as it heats.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and stabilizes the egg white meringue.
Shredded coconut
Adds chewy texture and coconut flavor to the custard.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolks into the scalding milk. Adding cold yolks straight into hot milk can scramble them. Tempering the yolks with some warm milk first, while stirring, keeps the custard smooth.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Coconutthe original

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