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Dessert

A Boiled Indian Pudding

A pudding made from Indian meal, milk, flour, suet, molasses, dried apples, and salt, boiled for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,104 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

A Boiled Indian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Scald the Indian meal with boiling milk.

  2. Add flour, chopped suet, molasses, dried apples, and salt, then mix all ingredients together.

  3. Tie the cloth tightly, allowing the pudding to swell by one third.

Boil

  1. Boil for 5 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. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

  2. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Beef + appletop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Indian meal
Cornmeal forms the body of the pudding and absorbs the hot milk to thicken the mixture.
Suet
Melting fat adds richness and a moist, tender texture to the pudding.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and a dark, deep flavour while helping keep the pudding moist.
Dried apples
Add fruity sweetness and chewy pieces that soften during the long boil.
Flour
Adds structure, helping the pudding hold its shape as it cooks.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth tightly. The pudding swells as it cooks, so the cloth must be tied firmly enough to hold its shape, yet loosely enough to leave room for that expansion. A loose tie can let water in and make the pudding soggy.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, beef, molasses):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, beef, molasses. 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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