Skip to main content
Dessert

Indian Fruit Pudding

A pudding made with Indian meal, milk, salt, molasses, and fruit, boiled for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,104 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Indian Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Stir sifted Indian meal into hot milk until the batter is stiff.

  2. Add salt and molasses, then mix in huckleberries or chopped sweet apple.

Cook

  1. Tie the mixture in a wet cloth, leaving room for it to swell, or place it in a pudding pan and cover with a cloth.

  2. Boil for 3 hours in water that is already boiling.

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 + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Molasses + appletop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together970 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Indian meal
Cornmeal thickens with the hot milk and sets the pudding into a firm, stiff mass.
Hot milk
Liquid that hydrates the cornmeal and gives the pudding a soft, tender body.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and a deep, caramel-like flavor.
Huckleberries or sweet apple
Supplies fruit flavor, moisture and sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Leaving room in the cloth for swelling. Cornmeal batter expands as it cooks and absorbs liquid. If it is tied too tightly in the cloth, the pudding can be squeezed or burst as it swells.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, 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.

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesMolasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipes