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Dessert

New England Baked Indian Pudding

A steamed pudding made with milk, Indian meal, molasses, spices, fruit, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

New England Baked Indian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Mix the Indian meal with the cold milk, then add to the boiling milk.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the molasses, brown sugar, salt, ginger, cinnamon, and beaten egg until smooth.

  4. Add candied orange peel, raisins, and currants to the mixture.

Assemble and steam

  1. Layer quartered apples in the bottom of a pudding mold.

  2. Pour the mixture over the apples and steam for 3 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with whipped cream sweetened with maple syrup.

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. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Ginger + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Indian meal
Thickens the milk into a firm, spoonable pudding as it cooks and steams.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps it set into a sliceable texture.
Molasses
Adds dark color and a deep, slightly bitter sweetness.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornmeal thickens into custard.
Apples
Add moisture and a tart contrast to the rich, sweet custard.

The step that matters

Stir the Indian meal into the boiling milk. Cornmeal added to hot liquid can clump if not mixed in smoothly. Mixing it first with cold milk lets the starch disperse evenly before it gelatinizes and thickens the pudding.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangethe original
  4. Applefits about as well

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