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Dessert

Indian Fruit Pudding

A fruit pudding made with milk, cornmeal, molasses, black raspberries, apples, sour cream, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Indian Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, stir cornmeal into hot milk to make a stiff batter.

  2. Add salt, molasses, black raspberries, and chopped apples; mix well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a fluted boiler and boil for three hours.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, sweeten thick sour cream with vanilla extract to taste.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Apple + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,501 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Cream and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,301 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 hot milk into a stiff batter that holds the fruit together.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and a deep, dark flavor.
Black raspberries
Provide fruit flavor, color, and moisture to the pudding.
Sweet apples
Add moisture, sweetness, and soft fruit texture as they cook.
Thick sour cream
Provides a rich, tangy base for the sauce.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, molasses, cream, vanilla):

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, molasses, cream, vanilla. 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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