Skip to main content
Main

Indian Pudding

A baked cornmeal pudding with raisins, butter, sugar, molasses, milk, eggs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 ↓

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.

Prepare the cornmeal

  1. Pour enough boiling water over the cornmeal to wet it thoroughly.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, salt, milk, molasses, nutmeg, and cinnamon to the butter mixture.

  3. Stir in the chopped raisins.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

  2. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for three 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Its starch thickens as it absorbs liquid, giving the pudding its body.
Eggs
They set during baking, binding the pudding into a soft, sliceable custard.
Butter
Its fat adds richness and a tender, smooth mouthfeel.
Sugar
It adds sweetness and helps the top brown during long baking.
Milk
It adds moisture and creaminess, keeping the pudding tender.
Molasses
It adds deep sweetness, color, and a slightly bitter flavor.

The step that matters

Wetting the cornmeal with boiling water. Boiling water swells the cornmeal starch and softens the grains. If it is not wet thoroughly, dry pockets remain and the pudding will have a gritty, uneven texture.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

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

Baked 36Boiled 26Steamed 12Apple 8New England 4Plain 4 See all 344 →

You might also like

Molasses SauceMolasses Sauce32 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes