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Dessert

Baked Indian Pudding

A baked custard-like pudding made with sweet milk, Indian meal, spices, sugar, molasses, and cold milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Baked Indian Pudding

Why it works: Nutmeg and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,324 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Baked Indian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the pudding

  1. Remove 1 teacup of sweet milk from the quart.

  2. Scald the remaining milk in a saucepan.

  3. Stir the Indian meal, salt, nutmeg, ginger, sugar, and molasses into the hot milk.

  4. Add the cold milk last and mix well.

  5. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 2 hours.

  2. Serve with 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Ginger + molassestop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ginger and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Indian meal
Cornmeal thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its body.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and a deep flavor during baking.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornmeal thickens and bakes into a custard-like set.
Eggs (in the method)
Not listed in the record; left out.

The step that matters

Stirring the Indian meal into the hot milk. Cornmeal clumps if it is added to liquid unevenly. Stirring it into hot milk while mixing well helps it disperse and thicken smoothly.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, ginger, sugar, 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.

More indian pudding recipes

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