Skip to main content
Dessert

Steamed Indian Pudding

A steamed pudding made with Indian meal, milk, boiling water, brown sugar, suet, eggs, raisins, baking powder, flour, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Steamed Indian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stir the Indian meal into the boiling water.

  2. Mix the baking powder with the flour.

Make the batter

  1. Add the well-beaten eggs and the other ingredients. Stir all together thoroughly.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the pudding for 2 hours.

  2. Serve with sweetened cream or 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Indian meal
Its starch thickens with the boiling water, giving the pudding a firm, sliceable body.
Eggs
They bind the batter and set as they cook, holding the pudding together.
Suet
This fat adds richness and a tender, moist crumb as it melts during steaming.
Baking powder
It releases gas when heated, helping the pudding rise and stay light.
Flour
It adds structure that supports the batter alongside the cornmeal and eggs.
Milk
It adds moisture and softens the batter, keeping the texture smooth.

The step that matters

Steam the pudding for 2 hours. Steam must stay steady and the water must not boil dry. Gentle, continuous heat cooks the starch and egg through evenly, while lost steam leaves the centre wet and dense.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, egg, raisin, flour. 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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes