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
Heat the milk in a pan or small bucket using a kettle of hot water until it boils.
Add the sugar.
Add the corn starch dissolved in a little cold milk.
Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks, then fold the whipped egg whites into the mixture.
Cook for a few minutes.
Pour the mixture into teacups, filling them about half full.
Set the teacups in a cool place.
Make the custard
For the custard, bring 1 pint of milk to a boil.
Add 3 tablespoons sugar to the boiling milk.
Thin the beaten egg yolks with 1 tablespoon milk.
Stir the yolk mixture into the boiling milk until thickened.
Flavor with 2 teaspoons lemon or vanilla.
Let the custard cool.
Serve
Serve by placing a mold of pudding in a saucer and pouring custard over it.
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.
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Milk + corntop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,955 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
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Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,927 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,053 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Corn starch
- Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and set.
- Egg whites
- Whipped to stiff peaks, they add lightness and airy texture to the pudding.
- Egg yolks
- Thicken the custard as they heat and add richness to its texture.
- Sweet milk
- Forms the liquid base of both the pudding and the custard.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness to both the pudding and the custard.
The step that matters
Stir the yolk mixture into the boiling milk until thickened. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if overheated or added too quickly to hot milk. Tempering with a little milk first and stirring constantly keeps the custard smooth as it thickens.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, corn, sugar):
- Vanillafits better
- Coconutfits better
- Figfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, corn, 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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