Why it works: Milk and molasses are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,243 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓
Baked 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.
Prepare the pudding
Boil the milk in a large pot.
Mix the Indian meal with a little milk until moistened.
Add the moistened Indian meal to the boiling milk and stir until it thickens.
Pour the mixture into a deep pudding pan.
Bake
Add the molasses and salt, then pour in the cold milk without stirring.
Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for 3 to 4 hours.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together7,243 recipes
Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Indian meal
- Cornmeal thickens the hot milk and gives the pudding its body and grainy texture.
- Milk
- Provides the liquid base that the cornmeal thickens and that bakes into a custard-like set.
- Molasses
- Adds sweetness, deep color, and a caramel-like flavor during the long bake.
The step that matters
Pour the cold milk without stirring. Leaving the cold milk unstirred keeps it floating on top, so the pudding bakes slowly into a layered, custardy texture instead of a uniformly dense one.
“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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