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Dessert

Boiled Indian Pudding

A boiled pudding made from sour milk, eggs, cornmeal, and a cream-sugar-nutmeg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Boiled Indian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine sour milk and beaten eggs in a bowl.

  2. Dissolve baking soda in a little hot water and add to the mixture.

  3. Stir in cornmeal until the batter is thicker than pancake batter.

  4. If desired, add fruit to the batter.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the batter in a cloth bag and boil for 1 hour.

  2. Mix cream, sugar, and nutmeg together for the sauce.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sour milk
Provides acidity that reacts with baking soda to help the batter rise.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during cooking to give the pudding its structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Cornmeal
Thickens the batter and forms the body of the pudding as it cooks.

The step that matters

Stir in cornmeal until thicker than pancake batter. Cornmeal absorbs liquid and thickens as it sits and cooks. A batter that is too thin will produce a loose, soggy pudding that does not hold its shape when boiled in the cloth bag.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, cream, sauce, sugar. 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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