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Dessert

Baked Indian Pudding

A baked pudding made with scalded milk, yellow Indian meal, ginger, molasses, eggs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Baked Indian Pudding

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 the pudding

  1. Scald the milk in a large pot.

  2. Stir in the yellow Indian meal and ginger, then let it stand for 20 minutes.

  3. Add the molasses and eggs, mixing well.

  4. Stir in the butter until melted.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and 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.

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

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

  2. Ginger + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Ginger + molassestop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. 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.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the pudding into a soft, sliceable custard.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and a rich, caramel-like flavor.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornmeal swells in and the eggs set into.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender texture.

The step that matters

Let the meal stand before adding the eggs. Cornmeal needs time to hydrate and swell in the hot milk. Standing lets it thicken so the pudding bakes to an even texture instead of a grainy or watery one.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

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