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Dessert

California Indian Pudding

A steamed pudding made with cornmeal, milk, molasses, raisins, suet, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

California Indian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Pour hot milk over cornmeal in a bowl.

  2. Add salt, molasses, sugar, chopped suet, ground ginger, cinnamon, baking soda, and raisins, then mix all ingredients well.

  3. Transfer mixture to a steaming dish and steam for three hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream and sugar.

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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Ginger + raisintop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Thickens the milk into a firm, spoonable pudding texture.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and a deep, rich flavor.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender during steaming.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to lighten the pudding and aid rising.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornmeal thickens.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot milk over the cornmeal. Hot liquid hydrates the cornmeal starch so it thickens evenly; adding cold milk or stirring poorly can leave lumps and an uneven texture.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, molasses, sugar, cinnamon, raisin):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovefits about as well
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, molasses, sugar, cinnamon, raisin. 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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