Why it works: Wheat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓
Indian Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Cook the base
Mix Indian meal and wheat flour with a little cold milk.
Stir the mixture into boiling milk.
Add salt and boil for 20 minutes.
Finish and bake
Let it cool, then beat in the eggs and sugar.
Add spices and bake for 45 minutes at 350°F (175°C).
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.
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Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,418 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
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Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,373 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 its starch swells when heated, giving the pudding body.
- Wheat flour
- Adds extra starch that thickens the mixture and helps it hold its shape.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the starches swell in and the custard sets from.
- Eggs
- Proteins set during baking, firming the pudding and giving it structure.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps soften the set texture of the baked pudding.
The step that matters
Stirring the meal mixture into boiling milk. Starch granules clump easily when they hit hot liquid. Mixing the meal and flour with cold milk first lets them separate, so stirring them into boiling milk yields a smooth pudding rather than lumps.
“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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