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Dessert

Plain Cornstarch Pudding

A simple pudding made from milk, egg yolks, sugar, and cornstarch, flavored with optional flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Plain Cornstarch Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard base

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until it comes to a boil.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks and gradually add the sugar until thick.

  3. Stir in the cornstarch a small portion at a time until smooth.

  4. Add the egg mixture to the boiling milk and stir continuously.

  5. Cook for 2 minutes after it starts boiling.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from heat, add the flavoring, and let cool.

  2. Serve alone or with 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 + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

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

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens into a creamy pudding.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken and enrich the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the egg yolks thicken when beaten.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth, set pudding as it heats.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg mixture into the boiling milk. Adding the eggs to very hot milk without constant stirring can scramble them into lumps. Stirring continuously and adding the mixture steadily keeps the custard smooth while the starch thickens it.

“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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