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Dessert

Dandy Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with milk, cornstarch, eggs, sugar, butter, and topped with a sweetened whipped egg white layer.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Dandy Pudding

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.

Make the custard

  1. Bring 1 quart of milk to a boil.

  2. Dissolve 3 tablespoons of cornstarch in cold milk and stir into the boiling milk.

  3. In a bowl, beat 4 egg yolks, then add ¼ cup sugar, ¼ teaspoon salt, and 1 tablespoon butter; mix well.

  4. Slowly stir the egg mixture into the boiling milk until smooth.

  5. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

Top and serve

  1. Let it cool, then beat 4 egg whites until frothy, sweeten with 4 tablespoons of sugar, and add almond or vanilla extract.

  2. Spread the egg white mixture on top of the pudding and return to the oven to harden.

  3. Serve cold.

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. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  3. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth, sliceable custard as it heats.
Egg yolks
Enrich and set the custard, giving it a rich texture and color.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that thickens and sets.
Egg whites
Whip into a light foam that bakes into a firm, glossy topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and the meringue topping.

The step that matters

Slowly stir the egg mixture into the boiling milk. Adding the egg mixture slowly, while stirring, tempers the yolks so they blend smoothly instead of scrambling into lumps when they meet the hot milk.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Pecansfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Cocoafits less well
  4. Walnutfits less well

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