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Dessert

Indian Baked Pudding

A baked pudding made with sweet milk, butter, eggs, cornmeal, raisins, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Indian Baked 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.

Prepare the mixture

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the Indian meal while the milk is boiling.

  3. Let the mixture stand until warm.

Mix and bake

  1. Combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix well.

  2. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Raisin + sugartop 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. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 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

Milk
Provides the liquid that the cornmeal swells in and most of the pudding's moisture.
Eggs
Set as they bake, binding the pudding and giving it a custard-like firmness.
Indian meal
Thickens the milk as its starch swells with heat, giving the pudding body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown lightly in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a softer, more tender texture.
Raisins
Add pockets of sweetness and a chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Stir in the Indian meal while the milk is boiling. Cornmeal starch must disperse evenly as it hydrates and thickens in hot liquid. Adding it to boiling milk while stirring keeps the mixture smooth, because unstirred starch clumps and cooks unevenly.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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