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Urad-ka-dal Pudding

A sweet pudding made from fermented urad dal batter and chana dal balls fried in ghee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cardamom and ghee work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 622 recipes. The science ↓

Urad-ka-dal Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batters

  1. Grind the soaked urad-ka-dal to a fine paste.

  2. Mix the salt into the urad-ka-dal paste and set aside for a few hours to ferment.

  3. Boil the chana dal and grind it with the sugar to a thick paste without adding water.

  4. Form the chana dal mixture into walnut-sized balls and set aside.

  5. Work the fermented urad-ka-dal paste briskly with a wooden spoon.

  6. If desired, add the yolks of the eggs to the urad-ka-dal batter for better rising.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip each chana dal ball into the urad-ka-dal batter and fry one at a time in boiling ghee.

  2. Serve hot on a dish.

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. Cardamom + gheetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together622 recipes
  2. Sugar + cardamomtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,044 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Ghee + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together418 recipes
  5. Cardamom + eggtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together582 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Urad-ka-dal
Forms the fermented batter that gives the pudding its structure and light texture.
Chana dal
Forms a thick, sweet paste inside each ball, giving body to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the chana dal paste and adds flavour to the filling.
Eggs
Optional; the yolks add richness and help the batter rise.

The step that matters

Fermenting the urad-ka-dal batter. Fermentation needs time and a warm, consistent environment to develop gas and tang; too short a rest leaves the batter dense and flat, so the dough does not rise properly.

Swap the cardamom

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, ghee, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Cardamomthe original
  3. Turmericfits less well
  4. Nutmegfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ghee, egg. 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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