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Dessert

Grandmother's Indian Pudding

A sweet cornmeal pudding made with milk, molasses, spices, and optional apples, baked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Grandmother's Indian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Scald the sweet milk in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in enough cornmeal to create a stiff batter, similar to bread dough.

  3. Add the molasses and bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Season with coarse sea salt, ginger, and cinnamon to taste.

Bake

  1. For added flavor, mix in quartered sweet apples before baking.

  2. Transfer to a baking dish and bake at 300°F (150°C) for 2.5 to 3 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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Ginger + appletop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Forms the stiff batter body that sets into a firm, spoonable pudding as it bakes.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and a deep, caramel-like flavor during baking.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the cornmeal and adds moisture and richness to the batter.
Sweet apples
Add moisture and a mild fruity sweetness as they soften in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake long and low. Cornmeal needs a long, gentle bake to fully hydrate and set. Baking too hot or too briefly leaves the center loose or grainy, while the slow heat lets the starch gelatinize evenly and the molasses deepen in flavor.

Swap the apple

The recipe marks apple as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, bread, molasses, ginger, cinnamon):

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, molasses, ginger, cinnamon. 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.

More indian pudding recipes

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