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Dessert

Indian Pudding

A sweet, custard-like dish made from milk, cornmeal, suet, molasses, spices, eggs, butter, raisins, currants, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger 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 ↓

Indian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the pudding

  1. Boil the milk with a pinch of salt.

  2. While boiling, stir in the cornmeal.

  3. Once hot, add the suet, molasses, cinnamon, and ginger.

  4. Let the mixture cool, then add the beaten eggs and butter.

  5. Fold in the raisins and currants, adding sugar to taste.

Bake

  1. Pour into a baking dish and bake at 300°F (150°C) for three hours.

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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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 set, spoonable pudding structure.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it bakes.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornmeal thickens and bakes into custard.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and a rich, caramel-like flavor.
Suet
Adds fat that gives the pudding richness and a moist texture.

The step that matters

Stirring in the cornmeal while the milk boils. Cornmeal added to boiling liquid must be stirred steadily or it clumps and scorches, and the starch needs heat to thicken the base properly.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, molasses, cinnamon, ginger, egg, butter, raisin):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, molasses, cinnamon, ginger, egg, butter, raisin. 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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