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Dessert

Indian Pudding with Apples

A sweet milk and cornmeal pudding with apples, baked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Indian Pudding with Apples

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the pudding base

  1. Scald the sweet milk in a pot.

  2. Stir in the cornmeal and cook until the mixture thickens.

  3. Remove from heat and add molasses, salt, nutmeg, cinnamon, and apples.

  4. Pour the mixture into a deep pudding dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 4 hours.

  2. After 1.5 hours, add the cold milk without stirring.

  3. Serve with cream and sugar or syrup.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  5. Molasses + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,928 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

Cornmeal
Thickens the milk into a stiff, spoonable pudding as it cooks and sets.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and a deep caramel-like flavor during baking.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornmeal swells and sets in.
Sweet apples
Add moisture and mild sweetness, softening as the pudding bakes.
Cold milk
Poured on top unstirred, it sinks and bakes into a creamy layer beneath the crust.

The step that matters

Adding the cold milk without stirring. Stirring in the cold milk at this stage would mix it through the set cornmeal base and lose the distinct layered texture. Leaving it undisturbed lets it settle and cook gently into a custardy layer while the cornmeal sets around it.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, molasses, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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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