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Baked Indian Pudding, with Fruit

A baked cornmeal pudding made with milk, raisins, butter, and optional spice or ginger.

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 ↓

Baked Indian Pudding, with Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Stir the cornmeal into the scalding milk and let it cool slightly.

  2. Add the beaten egg, raisins, and butter to the mixture.

  3. If desired, add spice or ginger.

Bake

  1. Bake until it separates into whey.

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 + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Thickens the hot milk as its starch swells, giving the pudding body.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the cornmeal thickens and the egg sets.
Egg
Sets as it heats, binding the pudding into a firm, sliceable custard.
Raisins
Add sweetness and a chewy texture against the soft pudding.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, softer mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Bake until it separates into whey. The egg proteins set as the heat rises, firming the custard. Judge doneness by this set, since overbaking squeezes out too much liquid and leaves the pudding grainy and dry.

Swap the ginger

The recipe marks ginger as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, raisin, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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