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Dessert

Indian Pudding

A baked pudding made with milk, cornmeal, molasses, sugar, raisins, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Indian Pudding

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 batter

  1. In a pot, stir 1 cup cornmeal into 2 quarts of scalded milk and bring to a boil.

  2. In a bowl, beat 2 eggs and mix in ½ cup sugar, 1 cup molasses, ½ cup flour, 1 teaspoon ginger, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, and 2 teaspoons salt.

  3. Combine the cornmeal mixture with the egg mixture and stir until smooth.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

  2. Stir in 1 cup cold milk and bake for an additional 1 to 2 hours.

  3. Serve with lemon sauce or whipped cream.

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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Thickens the milk and gives the pudding its body and grainy texture.
Eggs
Set during baking to give the pudding a firm, sliceable structure.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, deep color and a robust, caramel-like flavor.
Flour
Adds extra thickening so the custard holds together after baking.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and moisture that the cornmeal absorbs and the eggs set in.

The step that matters

Stirring cornmeal into the hot milk. Cornmeal added to hot liquid can clump quickly if not whisked in gradually. Lumps that form at this stage do not fully smooth out later, so the mixture should be stirred well as the cornmeal goes in.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, egg, molasses, sugar, raisin, 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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