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Dessert

Indian Pudding

A sweet cornmeal pudding made with milk, eggs, sugar, spices, raisins, and butter, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Indian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the cornmeal base

  1. Boil the milk in a pot.

  2. While boiling, stir in the cornmeal and salt.

  3. Once cool, beat the eggs in a bowl.

Assemble and bake

  1. Add sugar, ginger, cinnamon, raisins, and butter to the eggs and mix well.

  2. Stir this mixture into the pudding dish.

  3. Add the cold milk and mix until combined.

  4. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 2 hours.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornmeal thickens and the eggs set into a custard.
Cornmeal
Thickens the milk as it cooks and gives the pudding its grainy, sturdy body.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during baking, giving the pudding a custard-like structure.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavor and a softer, moister texture.
Raisins
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Stirring the cornmeal into boiling milk. Cornmeal added to hot milk must be stirred steadily so it hydrates evenly and does not clump. Lumps stay raw and leave an uneven texture after baking.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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