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Dessert

New England Indian Pudding

A sweet pudding made from cornmeal, milk, molasses, and salt, baked until jellied.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

New England Indian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the pudding

  1. Pour scalding hot sweet milk over corn meal moistened with molasses.

  2. Let it cool for 30 minutes.

  3. Add cold milk and salt to taste.

Bake

  1. Place in a 400°F (200°C) oven using both hot radiators.

  2. Bake for 4 to 5 hours until jellied and red.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Corn + molassestop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together644 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

Corn meal
Thickens the milk as it bakes, giving the pudding its body and set.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornmeal thickens and slowly cooks into a custard-like texture.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and deep colour, and helps give the pudding its characteristic red-brown hue.

The step that matters

Long, slow bake. Cornmeal needs prolonged heat to swell, soften and set fully. Baking too briefly leaves the pudding loose and grainy, while the slow cooking lets the starch gelatinise into a smooth, jellied texture.

“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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