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Dessert

Baked Indian Pudding

A sweet milk and cornmeal pudding flavored with molasses, ginger, and sugar, baked for two hours.

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

Why it works: Sugar and molasses are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Baked Indian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Scald the milk

  1. Heat 1 quart of milk.

  2. Reserve 1 teacup of milk.

  3. Scald the remaining milk.

Make the pudding

  1. Stir 4 tablespoons of cornmeal into the hot milk.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of salt, a pinch of ginger, 2 tablespoons of sugar, and ½ cup of molasses.

  3. Mix in the reserved cold milk.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 2 hours.

  2. Serve with butter and sugar or wine sauce.

  3. Optionally, add a cup of chopped sweet apples to bake with it.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Ginger + molassestop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

  5. Milk + gingertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,519 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Ginger and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Cornmeal
Thickens the milk as its starch swells with heat, giving the pudding its body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornmeal thickens and the bake sets.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and a rich, deep flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring the cornmeal into the hot milk. Cornmeal clumps when it hits liquid, so it should be stirred in steadily while the milk is hot. Its starch needs heat to swell and thicken, and evenly dispersed starch gives a smooth pudding instead of lumps.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerthe original
  3. Clovefits less well
  4. Nutmegfits less well

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