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Dessert

Boiled Indian Pudding

A sweet pudding made from milk, flour, cornmeal, sugar, molasses, suet or butter, salt, cinnamon, and eggs, boiled for hours.

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 ↓

Boiled Indian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a kettle, bring nearly all the milk to a boil.

  2. In a separate bowl, stir the flour and cornmeal with the remaining milk, then add to the boiling milk.

  3. Once thickened, remove from heat and mix in the other ingredients.

  4. If the mixture is too thick, add a little more milk.

  5. Boil for three hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream or butter.

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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 cornmeal and flour thicken into a pudding.
Flour
Adds body and helps thicken the mixture along with the cornmeal.
Cornmeal
Thickens the pudding and gives it a grainy, hearty texture.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and a rich caramel-like flavor.
Eggs
Help set and bind the pudding as it cooks.
Suet or butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, moist texture.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and cornmeal mixture to the boiling milk. Cornmeal and flour must be stirred smoothly into a liquid first so they do not clump. Adding them to boiling milk as a slurry lets starch swell evenly and thicken the pudding without lumps.

“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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