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Dessert

French Pudding

A custard pudding made with milk, cornstarch, eggs, sugar, vanilla, topped with frosted egg whites and coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,294 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

French Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. In a pot, combine part of the milk, salt, and sugar; bring to a boil.

  2. Dissolve cornstarch in the remaining milk and stir into the boiling mixture.

  3. Add the egg yolks while boiling and flavor with vanilla.

Make the frosting and bake

  1. For the frosting, beat egg whites to stiff peaks, then gradually add ½ cup sugar and flavor with lemon.

  2. Spread the frosting on the pudding and brown it in the oven at 400°F (200°C).

  3. Save a little frosting to moisten the top and garnish with grated coconut.

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. Vanilla + coconuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + coconuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 of the pudding that the cornstarch thickens.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk as it boils, giving the pudding its set body.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken the custard as they cook.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks to form an airy frosting that browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and, dissolved into the whites, stabilises the meringue frosting.

The step that matters

Add the egg yolks while boiling. Yolks thicken through heat but can scramble or curdle if added to a cold or slowly heated mixture. Adding them to the boiling pudding and keeping it moving helps them set smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Bananafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, vanilla, coconut. 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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