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Dessert

Baked Indian Pudding

A baked pudding made with Indian meal, flour, milk, suet, eggs, molasses, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Baked Indian Pudding

Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Baked Indian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, mix the Indian meal with enough water to make a smooth paste.

  3. Stir the smooth meal into the scalded milk and let it boil.

Make the pudding

  1. Add molasses to sweeten and stir in the salt and chopped suet.

  2. Once the mixture is cool, beat in the eggs.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 300°F (150°C) for 3 hours.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and a coarse, soft set.
Eggs
Bind the pudding and help it set into a custard-like texture as it bakes.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and deep color and flavor to the pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the meal thickens and the eggs set.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, contributing moisture and a tender texture.

The step that matters

Beat in the eggs only after the mixture is cool. Eggs scrambled by hot liquid curdle instead of blending smoothly. Cooling the mixture first lets the eggs disperse evenly, so they set into a uniform custard as it bakes.

“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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