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Dessert

Baked Indian Pudding

A baked cornmeal pudding with raisins, sugar, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Baked Indian Pudding

Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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 the batter

  1. Stir the cornmeal into the boiling milk.

  2. Once cooled, add sugar, butter, raisins, and beaten eggs; mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine cold milk, flour, and vanilla.

  4. Mix the cold milk mixture into the cornmeal mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour into a greased baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 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.

  1. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Raisin + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together782 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Cornmeal
Forms the thick, starchy body of the pudding as it sets.
Eggs
Bind the pudding and help it set firm when baked.
Milk
Provides the liquid that cornmeal absorbs and that gives the pudding its moist, tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to browning on the surface.
Flour
Adds extra body and helps the cold milk mixture blend smoothly into the batter.

The step that matters

Mix the cold milk mixture into the cornmeal mixture. Cornmeal thickens quickly when it cools, so the cold milk mixture should be blended in smoothly to avoid lumps and keep the batter an even texture before baking.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, butter, egg, flour, vanilla):

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Blueberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, butter, egg, flour, vanilla. 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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