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Dessert

Velvet Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with eggs, sugar, corn starch, sweet milk, and flavored with lemon or vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Velvet Pudding

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Velvet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks and whites separately.

  2. Dissolve the corn starch in a little cold milk.

  3. Add the yolks and ½ cup sugar to the corn starch mixture.

  4. Boil the sweet milk and pour it slowly into the mixture while boiling.

  5. Cook until thick enough to cut with a knife.

  6. Flavor with lemon or vanilla and pour into a baking dish.

Top and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites with 1 cup sugar until stiff, then cover the pudding with this mixture.

  2. Brown slightly in the oven and serve cold with whipped 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.

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.

  1. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard and whites, beaten stiff with sugar, form the browned topping.
Corn starch
Gelatinizes when heated with the milk, thickening the pudding until it can be cut.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that thickens as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and stiffens the egg whites for the topping.

The step that matters

Cook until thick enough to cut with a knife. Cornstarch thickens only when the mixture reaches a boil and is stirred, so stopping early leaves a runny custard. Cooking too long can scorch it or break the starch, so watch for a firm, glossy set.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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