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Dessert

Baked Indian Pudding

A sweet pudding made with milk, meal, flour, eggs, sugar, spices, butter, raisins, and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Baked Indian Pudding

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Baked Indian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Boil 1 quart of sweet milk.

  2. Pour the boiled milk over 1 pint of sifted meal.

  3. Stir well.

  4. Add 3 tablespoons of wheat flour.

  5. Add 1 pint of cold milk.

Add the eggs and seasonings

  1. Beat 3 eggs with 3 tablespoons of sugar.

  2. Stir the beaten mixture into the pot.

  3. Add 2 teaspoons of salt.

  4. Add 2 teaspoons of cinnamon or grated nutmeg.

  5. Add 2 teaspoons of butter or suet.

Bake and finish

  1. If a rich pudding is desired, bake for 6 minutes.

  2. Stir in ½ pound of raisins.

  3. Stir in 1 cup of milk or cream.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Wheat + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together537 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add richness and structure as they set with heat.
Meal
Forms the thick body of the pudding as its starch swells in hot milk.
Wheat flour
Thickens the mixture further and helps it hold together when baked.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that cooks into a soft, custardy texture.
Butter or suet
Adds fat for a richer mouthfeel and a softer crumb.
Raisins
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Stir the beaten mixture into the pot. The eggs are added to a hot mixture, which can scramble them into lumps if poured in quickly. Stirring steadily while adding them lets the eggs blend in evenly and thicken the pudding smoothly.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, wheat, flour, egg, sugar, cinnamon, 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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