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Dessert

Caramel Pudding

A caramel pudding made with brown sugar, milk, corn starch, walnuts, topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 349 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Caramel Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Melt and brown the brown sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Add the hot milk and corn starch dissolved in cold milk.

  3. Cook the mixture until it thickens.

Serve

  1. Pour the caramel over the English walnuts.

  2. Serve with whipped cream.

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 + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together349 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Milk + walnuttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Brown sugar
Melts and browns into a caramel that gives the pudding its sweetness and deep flavor.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the thickened custard is built on, adding body and creaminess.
Corn starch
Thickens the hot mixture as its starch granules swell and set when heated.
English walnuts
Add crunch and a nutty flavor that contrasts with the soft, sweet pudding.

The step that matters

Cooking the mixture until it thickens. Corn starch must first be fully dissolved in cold milk so it does not clump when added to the hot liquid. The mixture then needs enough cooking, with stirring, for the starch to swell and thicken. Undercooked starch leaves a thin pudding with a raw, starchy taste, and unstirred sugar or milk can scorch on the pan bottom.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Peanutfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, corn, cream. 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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