Skip to main content
Dessert

Corn Flour Pudding

A sweet pudding made from corn flour, milk, sugar, egg, and orange peel, boiled or baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Corn Flour Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. In a saucepan, mix corn flour, milk, sugar, salt, and orange peel.

  2. Stir over medium heat until boiling, about 5 minutes.

  3. Beat the egg and mix it into the batter.

Cook the pudding

  1. Pour the batter into a buttered teacup and tie it in a small cloth.

  2. Boil for 25 minutes and serve hot.

Variation

  1. For a variation, bake in a small dish at 350°F (175°C) instead of boiling.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + orangetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together586 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 flour
Thickens the milk as it boils, giving the pudding a soft, set structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the corn flour thickens into a custard-like batter.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the pudding into a firm, tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the mild, starchy flavour of the corn flour.
Orange peel
Adds a bright citrus aroma to the pudding.

The step that matters

Bring the batter to a full boil before adding the egg. Corn flour only thickens fully once it reaches a boil, and stirring keeps it smooth and free of lumps. Adding the beaten egg to a batter that is still thin and cool helps it blend evenly rather than curdling.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, flour, milk, sugar, egg, butter. 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesCorn CakeCorn Cake90 recipes