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Dessert

Boiled Indian Pudding

A boiled pudding made with molasses, milk, eggs, meat, cornmeal, spices, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Boiled Indian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. In a bowl, stir together molasses and milk.

  2. Add eggs and mix well.

  3. Gradually stir in chopped meat, cornmeal, cinnamon, nutmeg, and lemon rind until a stiff batter forms.

Boil the pudding

  1. Dip a cloth in boiling water, sprinkle with flour, and pour the mixture into the cloth.

  2. Tie the cloth securely, leaving room for the pudding to swell.

  3. Boil in a small lard kettle 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Molasses + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Provides dark color and sweet, strong flavor that defines the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set as the pudding cooks.
Cornmeal
Forms the body of the pudding, thickening it into a stiff, sliceable batter.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, softening the cornmeal as it cooks.
Chopped meat
Adds savory richness and fat that give the pudding substance.

The step that matters

Leaving room in the cloth. Cornmeal puddings swell as they cook, and a tightly tied cloth can restrict expansion, causing the pudding to burst or cook unevenly. Tying it loosely but securely lets it expand while keeping its shape.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, milk, egg, meat, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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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