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Dessert

New England Baked Indian Pudding

A steamed pudding made from milk, Indian meal, wheat flour, eggs, sugar, spices, butter, and optional raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

New England Baked Indian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Boil the milk and pour it over the Indian meal, stirring well to scald the meal.

  2. Mix the wheat flour with the cold milk, stirring gradually to avoid lumps.

  3. Combine the flour mixture with the Indian meal and mix well.

Finish and bake

  1. When lukewarm, beat the eggs with the sugar and stir into the mixture.

  2. Add the salt, cinnamon (or nutmeg), and butter (or suet).

  3. If using raisins, add them after baking for 5-6 minutes and increase milk by 1 cup.

  4. Bake for 3 hours without eggs or until set with eggs.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Wheat + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together537 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

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

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

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

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 as its starch sets during baking.
Eggs
Set the custard and bind the pudding into a firm, sliceable texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that scalds the meal and gives the pudding its moist, creamy base.
Wheat flour
Adds extra thickening so the pudding holds its shape with less stiffness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly at the surface.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that softens the texture and carries the spice flavour.

The step that matters

Scalding the meal with boiling milk. Pouring boiling milk over the cornmeal swells and softens its starch before baking, which helps prevent a grainy, lumpy pudding. Stirring well ensures every part of the meal is evenly hydrated.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, wheat, flour, egg, sugar, cinnamon, butter):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, wheat, flour, egg, sugar, cinnamon, 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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