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Dessert

An Indian Pudding

A cornmeal pudding made with milk, sugar or molasses, butter, salt, and raisins, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

An 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 base

  1. Boil the milk in a pot.

  2. Pour half of the hot milk over the cornmeal.

  3. Let the milk and cornmeal cool.

  4. Combine the cooled milk and cornmeal.

  5. Sweeten with sugar or molasses.

  6. Add the butter, salt, and raisins, and mix well.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 2 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.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 it cooks and gives the pudding its body and grainy texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornmeal swells in and sets into a custard-like pudding.
Sugar or molasses
Adds sweetness and flavour, with molasses also contributing depth and a darker colour.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Cooling the cornmeal mixture before combining. Cornmeal starch thickens when heated in liquid, so adding it to hot milk all at once can cause lumps. Pouring in only half the hot milk first and letting it cool before combining helps the cornmeal hydrate evenly and keeps the pudding smooth.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

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