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Dessert

Apple and Baked Indian Pudding

A baked pudding made with milk, Indian meal, apples, sugar, cream, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Apple and Baked 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 pudding

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the Indian meal and salt until well combined.

  3. Pare and cut the apples into pieces, then add them to the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake for 3 hours at 300°F (150°C).

  2. Serve warm with sugar, cream, and a sprinkle of nutmeg.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornmeal thickens and bakes into a custard.
Indian meal
Cornmeal that thickens the mixture and gives the pudding its body as it bakes.
Apples
Add moisture and tart-sweet flavour, softening as the pudding bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during the long bake.

The step that matters

Baking for a long, slow time at a low temperature. Cornmeal needs prolonged gentle heat to fully swell and set into a creamy, sliceable pudding rather than a runny or gritty one. Too high a heat can scorch the milk solids or dry the pudding out before the cornmeal has softened.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, cream, nutmeg. 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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