Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Indian Pudding

A boiled pudding made from sweet milk, cornmeal, suet, eggs, sugar, molasses, spices, dried fruit, and apples.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Boiled Indian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Scald the milk in a pot.

  2. While boiling, stir in enough cornmeal to make a thick batter.

  3. Add salt to taste.

  4. Remove from heat.

  5. Stir until cool.

  6. Stir in the beef suet when the mixture is half cooked.

  7. Beat the eggs.

  8. Add the beaten eggs along with sugar, molasses, ginger, and cinnamon.

Bag and boil

  1. Wet a pudding bag in hot water.

  2. Flour the pudding bag.

  3. Fill the pudding bag half full with the mixture.

  4. Tie the bag tightly close to the top to allow for swelling.

  5. Boil the pudding for five hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream or hard 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.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Chestnut + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Cornmeal
Thickens the scalded milk into a firm batter that holds the pudding together.
Beef suet
Adds fat that enriches the pudding and keeps it moist during the long boil.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set as it cooks.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and a deep, dark flavor.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornmeal thickens.

The step that matters

Stir in the beef suet when the mixture is half cooked. Suet added while the batter is still hot melts and spreads through the mixture; added too early or too late it can clump or stay in greasy pockets instead of blending evenly.

Swap the chestnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Chestnutthe original

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

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes