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Cornmeal Pudding

A baked cornmeal pudding made with milk, sugar, molasses, eggs, butter, spices, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 ↓

Cornmeal 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. Stir together cornmeal and flour with cold milk.

  2. Scald the milk and stir the mixture into it, cooking until thick.

  3. Thin the mixture with cold milk to a consistency like thin batter.

Add the rest and pour

  1. Add sugar, molasses, eggs, butter, salt, nutmeg, cinnamon, and baking soda just before baking.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for two hours.

  2. After 30 minutes, stir the pudding thoroughly.

  3. Finish baking.

  4. Serve hot with hard sauce or cream.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Forms the thick body of the pudding as its starch swells in hot milk.
Flour
Adds thickening and structure, helping the batter hold together while baking.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the pudding and give it a tender, custard-like texture.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, depth of flavor, dark color, and moisture to the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender crumb.

The step that matters

Cooking the cornmeal mixture until thick. Cornmeal starch must be cooked in hot liquid to swell and thicken; if it is undercooked, the pudding can stay gritty and fail to set properly in the oven.

“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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