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Dessert

Indian Meal Pudding

A baked pudding made with sweet skimmed milk, Indian meal, eggs, molasses, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,655 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Indian Meal 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. Boil the sweet skimmed milk in a large pot.

  2. Stir in the Indian meal and mix well.

  3. Add the salt, beaten eggs, molasses (or sugar), cold milk, and cinnamon.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a deep dish.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for four 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. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Egg + cinnamontop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,058 recipes

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

Egg and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,058 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Indian meal
Cornmeal thickens the hot milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and structure.
Eggs
Beaten eggs set during baking, binding the pudding into a sliceable custard-like texture.
Molasses or sugar
Adds sweetness and depth, and helps the top brown as the pudding bakes.
Sweet skimmed milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornmeal thickens and the eggs set into a custard.

The step that matters

Stirring in the Indian meal. Cornmeal must be stirred well into the boiling milk so it hydrates evenly; otherwise it clumps and the pudding bakes up with a grainy, uneven 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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