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Dessert

Corn Starch Pudding

A sweet pudding made from cornmeal, molasses, milk, butter, eggs, and spices, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Corn Starch Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Boil the milk, then pour it hot over the corn meal while stirring well.

  2. Warm the butter.

  3. In a separate bowl, stir the baking soda into the molasses.

  4. Beat the eggs separately and add them when the milk mixture is cold.

  5. Mix everything thoroughly.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into a buttered dish and bake until set.

  2. Serve with sweet sauce.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

  4. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 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 meal
Forms the body of the pudding as its starch thickens with the hot milk.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and depth of flavor to the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm when baked.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to lighten the batter and help it rise.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, more tender texture.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the corn meal and gives the pudding its moist, creamy base.

The step that matters

Add the eggs when the milk mixture is cold. Hot milk would begin cooking the eggs as soon as they go in, causing lumps or curdling and uneven setting. Cooling the mixture first keeps the eggs smooth and lets the batter bake evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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