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Dessert

Simple Boiled Indian Pudding

A boiled pudding made from Indian meal, wheat flour, butter, eggs, and milk, served with butter and molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Simple Boiled Indian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the Indian meal, wheat flour, and butter.

  2. Pour in enough warm milk to create a thick batter.

  3. Add the salt and mix well.

  4. Whisk the eggs and incorporate them into the batter.

Boil and serve

  1. Prepare a pudding bag by flouring it well inside.

  2. Pour the mixture into the bag, leaving 2-3 inches of space at the top.

  3. Tie the bag tightly and boil it for 2 hours.

  4. Serve with butter and molasses.

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. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Wheat + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Forms the thick body of the pudding, giving it a coarse, sturdy texture.
Wheat flour
Adds structure and helps bind the batter so it holds together when boiled.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during cooking, adding richness and structure.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a soft, moist texture.

The step that matters

Tie the bag tightly. If the bag is loose, water can enter during boiling and dilute the batter, while the pudding needs room to expand slightly, so leaving space at the top and sealing firmly protects the texture.

“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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