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Dessert

Steamed Indian Pudding

A steamed pudding made with sweet milk, meal, flour, ginger, cinnamon, and molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Steamed Indian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Heat 2 quarts of sweet milk to boiling point.

  2. Stir in 2 cups of meal mixed with 1 tablespoon of flour.

  3. Remove from heat, then add salt and sweeten with molasses.

  4. Add ½ teaspoon of ginger and ½ teaspoon of cinnamon.

  5. Stir in 2 cups of cold milk.

Steam

  1. Steam for 3 hours or more.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Cinnamon + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Ginger + molassestop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Meal
Thickens as it heats and gives the pudding its body and texture.
Sweet milk
Provides the liquid that the meal absorbs and softens as it steams.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and a deep, rich flavor.
Flour
Adds extra thickening so the pudding holds together.

The step that matters

Stirring the meal into the boiling milk. Cornmeal starch thickens as it heats, and if the meal is not stirred in well it clumps into lumps that stay dry inside. Stirring keeps the grains separated so they hydrate evenly.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, cinnamon, 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.

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