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Dessert

Dandy Pudding

A milk and egg yolk pudding thickened with corn starch, frosted with beaten egg whites and sugar, then browned and served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Dandy Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan until very hot.

  2. Dissolve the corn starch in a small amount of cold milk.

  3. Stir the dissolved corn starch into the hot milk.

  4. Add the egg yolks and stir until the mixture thickens.

  5. Pour the mixture into a pail.

  6. Set the pail in a kettle of boiling water to cook.

  7. Pour the pudding into a dish.

  8. Let it cool completely.

Make and brown the frosting

  1. Beat the egg whites for the frosting.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of sugar for each egg to the frosting.

  3. Flavor the frosting and pudding with lemon or vanilla extract.

  4. Place the pudding in the oven to brown the frosting until it is a delicate color.

Serve

  1. Serve cold for the best taste.

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 + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

  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 liquid base that the starch and yolks thicken into a custard.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk as its granules swell and gelatinize when heated.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the custard as their proteins set with gentle heat.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that gives the frosting its light, airy structure.
White sugar
Sweetens the frosting and helps it brown to a golden color in the oven.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks and stirring until thickened. Egg yolks thicken custard as their proteins set, but if the mixture gets too hot or is not stirred, the yolks can scramble and curdle. Keeping the heat moderate and stirring constantly gives a smooth result.

Swap the lemon

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

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