Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Indian Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Make the pudding base
Boil the milk in a pot.
Whisk in the cornmeal and cook until thickened like mush.
Thin the mixture with additional milk and sweeten to taste.
Beat in the eggs and add fruit if desired.
Bake and serve
Pour into a baking dish and bake until set.
Serve with sauce.
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.
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 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 into a mush that gives the pudding its body.
- Eggs
- Set during baking to bind the pudding into a sliceable custard.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the cornmeal thickens and the eggs set.
The step that matters
Cooking the cornmeal mush. Cornmeal must be cooked long enough to fully thicken and lose its raw starchy taste before the eggs are added. Stirring keeps it from scorching on the bottom of the pot.
“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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