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Dessert

Plain Indian Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Plain 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. Bring the milk to a boil.

  2. Stir in the cornmeal.

  3. Add the beaten eggs, salt, brown sugar, and butter.

  4. Mix in nutmeg, cinnamon, and ginger to taste.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 300°F (150°C) for 2 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 + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Milk + buttertop 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

Yellow cornmeal
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and grainy texture.
Eggs
Set during baking, binding the pudding so it holds together when cut.
Light brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses note that deepens the pudding's color and flavor.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the cornmeal absorbs and the eggs set within.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stir in the cornmeal. Cornmeal must be added gradually to the boiling milk while stirring, otherwise it clumps and cooks unevenly. Once the grains are hydrated and thickened, the mixture is ready to combine with the eggs.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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

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