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Dessert

Kiss Pudding

A milk and corn starch pudding with egg yolks, frosted with beaten egg whites and sugar, topped with grated coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 306 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Kiss Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat part of the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the sugar and salt until it boils.

  3. Dissolve the corn starch in the remaining milk.

  4. Stir the dissolved corn starch into the boiling milk.

  5. Add the egg yolks and a little flour. Mix well.

Make the frosting

  1. Beat the egg whites for the frosting.

  2. Mix in ½ cup sugar and lemon flavor into the beaten egg whites.

Assemble and brown

  1. Cover the pudding.

  2. Brown it nicely.

  3. Moisten the top with a little frosting.

  4. Sprinkle grated coconut over it.

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. Corn + coconuttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together306 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 heats, giving the pudding its body and set.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it thicken to a smooth, rich texture.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that forms the light, sweet frosting topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and, dissolved into whipped whites, stabilises the frosting.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the pudding that the starch thickens.

The step that matters

Stir the dissolved corn starch into the boiling milk. Starch must be fully dispersed and the milk kept hot enough for the starch granules to swell and thicken. Adding it to cool or unstirred milk can cause lumps, and undercooking leaves a raw starchy taste and a thin texture.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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