Skip to main content
Dessert

Boiled Indian Pudding

A boiled pudding made with molasses, milk, eggs, beef suet, Indian meal, spices, and lemon peel, served hot with butter, wine, and nutmeg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Boiled Indian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Warm the molasses and milk together in a pot.

  2. Beat the eggs and gradually stir them into the molasses and milk mixture.

  3. Add the chopped beef suet and enough Indian meal to create a thick batter.

  4. Stir in the cinnamon, nutmeg, and grated lemon peel until well combined.

Boil and serve

  1. Dip a cloth into boiling water, shake off excess, and dust lightly with flour.

  2. Place the mixture into the cloth, tie it securely, leaving room for expansion.

  3. Boil the pudding in water for three hours.

  4. Serve hot with a sauce made of drawn butter, wine, and nutmeg.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Adds sweetness and a dark, rich flavor to the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the pudding as it cooks.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender during boiling.
Indian meal
Thickens the batter and gives the pudding its body and structure.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid that hydrates the cornmeal.

The step that matters

Leaving room in the cloth for expansion. The pudding swells as the cornmeal absorbs liquid and the eggs set during boiling. If the cloth is tied too tightly, the pudding can burst or cook unevenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, milk, egg, beef, cinnamon, nutmeg, flour. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesMolasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipes