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Dessert

A Very Simple Indian Pudding

A pudding made with apples, milk, cornmeal, molasses, and salt, cooked until thick and set overnight.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and milk 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 Very Simple Indian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Place chopped apples in a pot with milk and bring to a boil.

  2. Stir in meal until the mixture thickens to the consistency of hasty pudding.

  3. Add a little cold milk and molasses, and season with salt.

Bake overnight

  1. Transfer to an earthen dish and let it stand in the oven overnight.

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. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

  2. Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Apple + molassestop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together970 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding fruit flavor and moisture to the pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the meal thickens into a pudding.
Meal
Absorbs the hot liquid and swells, thickening the mixture into a soft, set pudding.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, depth of flavor, and a deep brown color during slow baking.

The step that matters

Stir in meal until it thickens. Meal starch must be stirred into the boiling mixture so it swells evenly; adding it too fast or unstirred can leave lumps and an uneven texture.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, 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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