Name: Baked Indian Pudding
Ingredients: 2 quarts scalded milk; 1½ cups yellow Indian meal; 1 tablespoon ginger; 1 cup molasses; 2 eggs; 1 walnut-sized piece of butter

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Baked 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.

Prepare

Scald the milk in a pot.
Mix in the Indian meal and ginger, and let it stand for 20 minutes.

Bake

Stir in the molasses, eggs, and butter until well combined.
Pour the mixture into a baking dish.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 2 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Ginger + walnuttop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together737 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Ginger + molassestop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,116 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,832 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Milk + walnuttop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,236 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Yellow indian meal: Cornmeal that thickens the milk and gives the pudding its body as it bakes.
Molasses: Adds sweetness, dark color, and a deep flavor to the pudding.
Eggs: Set during baking to firm the pudding into a sliceable custard-like texture.
Milk: Forms the liquid base that the cornmeal swells in and the custard sets from.

Swap the ginger

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

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegfits better
Allspicefits about as well
Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, molasses, egg, walnut, butter. 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.