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Dessert

Steamed Indian Pudding

A steamed pudding made from milk, eggs, Indian meal, suet, molasses, spices, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger 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 ↓

Steamed Indian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Heat the milk until boiling.

  2. Add the baking soda and pour it over the Indian meal, stirring well.

  3. Add the powdered suet and coarse sea salt.

  4. Once the mixture is cool, mix in the beaten eggs, molasses, and spices, and beat well.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a well-greased mold and steam for 4 hours.

  2. Serve with hard sauce.

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 + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Molasses + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Molasses + gingertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Indian meal
Cornmeal forms the body of the pudding and sets as it steams.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set into a firm, sliceable custard.
Milk
Hydrates the cornmeal and gives the pudding its moist, creamy texture.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, depth, and a darker color to the pudding.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the eggs. Beaten eggs added to a very hot cornmeal mixture can scramble or cook unevenly, leaving a lumpy texture instead of a smooth, uniformly set pudding.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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

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