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Dessert

Boiled Indian Pudding

A steamed cornmeal pudding made with sweet and sour milk, baking soda, and maple sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Boiled Indian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Butter a quart pail.

  2. Pour the mixture of sweet milk, sour milk, baking soda, salt, and cornmeal into the pail.

  3. Cover and steam for 2½ to 3 hours until very light and spongy.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Boil maple sugar and sweet cream or milk together for the sauce.

  2. Just before serving, add a piece of butter the size of an egg to 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Forms the body of the pudding, setting into a soft, spoonable structure as it steams.
Sour milk or buttermilk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda, helping the pudding rise and turn light.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to release gas, lightening the pudding's texture.
Maple sugar
Provides sweetness and, boiled into the cream, forms a sweet, thick sauce.
Sweet cream or milk
Adds richness and moisture to the sauce, carrying the maple sugar.

The step that matters

Steam covered for the full 2½ to 3 hours. The pudding must steam gently and long enough for the cornmeal to set and the batter to rise with the baking soda reaction. Lifting the lid or stopping early leaves it dense rather than light and spongy.

“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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