Skip to main content
Main

Corn Pudding with Tomato

A baked corn pudding with stewed tomatoes, eggs, milk, butter, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Corn and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,099 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Corn Pudding with Tomato

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Cut the corn from the ear and scrape it down with a knife, leaving a few whole grains.

  2. Beat the eggs in a bowl, then add the milk, butter, pepper, and salt.

Make the pudding

  1. Stir in the corn and the stewed tomatoes. Mix well and pour into a baking dish.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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 + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 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
Provides the main bulk and sweet flavor, with scraped pulp adding body to the custard.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the pudding its structure and custard-like texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and adds moisture and richness.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender texture.
Stewed tomatoes
Add moisture and gentle acidity, balancing the sweetness of the corn.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs set as their proteins coagulate with heat. Pulling the pudding too early leaves it runny, while overbaking makes it dry and grainy.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, egg, milk, butter, pepper, 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.

You might also like