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Dessert

Baked Indian Pudding

A baked pudding made with milk, Indian meal, eggs, flour, sugar, molasses, ginger, cinnamon, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Baked Indian Pudding

Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Baked Indian 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 pudding

  1. Boil 1 pint of milk.

  2. Stir in 1 large teacup of Indian meal while boiling.

  3. Cool slightly, then add 3 beaten eggs and 1 pint of cold milk.

  4. Mix in 1 tablespoon of flour, ½ cup of sugar, ½ cup of molasses, 1 teaspoon of ginger, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, and ¼ teaspoon of salt.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake for 1.5 hours at 350°F (175°C).

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  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

Indian meal
Thickens the milk into a firm, spoonable pudding base as it cooks.
Eggs
Set the custard during baking and add richness and structure.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness, moisture and a deep caramel-like flavor.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the meal swells in and the custard sets from.
Flour
Adds extra body and helps the pudding hold its shape.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, flour, sugar, molasses, cinnamon. 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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