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
Ingredients
Directions
Make the pudding base
Boil the sweet milk in a double boiler.
Stir in the Indian meal.
Let the mixture stand on the back of the stove for 1 hour.
Melt the butter and molasses together.
Add the melted butter and molasses to the hot mixture.
Let the mixture stand for 30 minutes.
Bake
Add the beaten eggs and cold sweet milk just before baking.
Bake for 45 minutes.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together7,243 recipes
Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
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Molasses + buttertop 30% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together8,123 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Indian meal
- Cornmeal that thickens the milk into a firm, spoonable pudding as it stands.
- Eggs
- Bind the mixture and help it set into a custard-like texture when baked.
- Molasses
- Adds sweetness, dark color and a rich, caramel-like flavor.
- Butter
- Adds fat for richer flavor and a softer, more tender texture.
- Sweet milk
- Forms the liquid base that the cornmeal thickens and the eggs set.
The step that matters
Let the mixture stand before adding the eggs. Standing lets the cornmeal swell and thicken the hot liquid. Adding eggs too early, or to a mixture still too hot, can scramble them, so they should go in just before baking.
“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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