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Dessert

Quick Made Indian Pudding

A sweet milk pudding made with eggs, sugar, butter, and Indian meal, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Quick Made Indian Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the pudding

  1. In a large pot, heat the sweet milk until it is ready to boil.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the sugar.

  3. Add the butter and salt to the boiling milk.

  4. Sprinkle in the Indian meal while stirring continuously.

  5. Quickly stir in the beaten eggs.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until set.

  2. Add raisins if desired for extra flavor.

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

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

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

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

  3. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and a soft, set texture.
Eggs
Set when baked, adding structure and richness to the pudding.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornmeal thickens and the eggs set into a custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the set texture of the pudding.

The step that matters

Stir in the Indian meal gradually. Adding cornmeal slowly while stirring keeps it from clumping in the hot milk, so the pudding cooks smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, sugar, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, 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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