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Dessert

Delmonico Pudding

A custard pudding made from milk, corn starch, eggs, and sugar, finished with a meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Delmonico Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Mix corn starch with a little cold milk.

  2. Separate the eggs; add yolks to corn starch mixture.

  3. Stir in 6 tablespoons sugar and add to boiling milk.

  4. Boil for 3 minutes until cooked.

Make the meringue and bake

  1. Beat egg whites to stiff peaks and fold in 3 tablespoons powdered sugar.

  2. Bake until the meringue is set and holds its shape.

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard, and whites whip into a meringue that gives the pudding its topping.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, sliceable custard as it heats.
Milk
Forms the body of the custard and carries the sweetness and flavor through the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps stabilize the meringue.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard until thick. Corn starch only thickens fully when the mixture reaches a boil and stays there briefly. Undercooked starch leaves the custard thin and runny, so the pudding will not set properly after baking.

“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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