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Dessert

Indian Fruit Pudding

A fruit pudding made with milk, cornmeal, molasses, salt, and apples or huckleberries, boiled for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,104 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Indian Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Make a batter with hot milk and enough cornmeal to make it stiff.

  2. Add molasses and salt, then mix in the chopped apples or huckleberries.

  3. Tie the mixture in a wet cloth, leaving room for it to swell.

Boil and serve

  1. Place it in boiling water and boil for three hours.

  2. Serve with sweet 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. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

  2. Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Molasses + appletop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together970 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Forms the stiff batter that gives the pudding its body and firm set.
Hot milk
Hydrates the cornmeal and adds moisture and softness to the batter.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and a deep, rich flavour.
Sweet apples or huckleberries
Provide fruit flavour and moisture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Leave room in the cloth for swelling. Cornmeal batter expands as it cooks and absorbs water. If the cloth is tied too tightly, the pudding can be squeezed or burst as it swells, so room must be left.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, molasses. 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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