Name: Sweet Corn Pudding
Ingredients: 12 ears of sweet corn; 1 quart milk; 2 eggs; ½ cup flour; 1 tablespoon sugar; ¼ teaspoon salt

Why it works: Corn and milk 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 ↓

Sweet Corn 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.

Prepare the corn

Remove the kernels from the corn cobs using a knife, scraping the corn off the cobs.

Make the batter

In a bowl, mix the corn with the milk.
Add the beaten eggs, flour, sugar, and salt to the corn mixture.

Bake and serve

Pour the mixture into baking tins, filling them to a thickness of 1½ inches.
Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for two hours or longer.
Serve warm with butter.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,955 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,165 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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

Sweet corn: Provides the main body and sweetness of the pudding.
Milk: Adds moisture and creates the liquid base for the custard.
Eggs: Set during baking to give the pudding its firm, sliceable structure.
Flour: Thickens the mixture and helps it hold its shape when baked.

The step that matters

Baking time and depth. Filling the tins to 1½ inches and baking long enough lets the egg proteins set fully through the center. Too shallow or too short a bake can leave the middle runny, while the gentle heat of the oven keeps the custard from curdling.

“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.