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Dessert

Soiled Corn Starch Pudding

A sweet pudding made from milk, sugar, corn starch, eggs, butter, and vanilla or almond flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Soiled Corn Starch Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Boil the milk with the sugar.

  2. Mix the corn starch with a little cold milk, then thin the mixture with some hot milk from the kettle.

  3. Quickly pour the corn starch mixture into the boiling milk.

  4. Stir for 2 minutes until thickened.

  5. Beat the yolks with a spoonful of milk.

  6. Remove the kettle from heat.

  7. Stir in the yolks.

  8. Add the butter and flavoring.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the pudding into a lightly buttered pan.

  2. Keep warm until serving.

  3. Serve with lemon syrup sauce or hot 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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 into a smooth, set custard as it heats and gelatinizes.
Egg yolks
Add richness and further thicken the pudding when stirred in off the heat.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens into the pudding.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich, smooth mouthfeel and flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the starch's flat taste.

The step that matters

Quickly pour the corn starch mixture into the boiling milk. Starch must be dispersed in liquid before heating, or it clumps. Pouring it in quickly into boiling milk and stirring keeps the starch evenly distributed so the pudding thickens smooth instead of lumpy.

“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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