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 custard base
Boil 1 quart of milk.
Gradually pour the hot milk over the Indian meal.
Return the mixture to a double boiler and boil for one hour, stirring often.
Add the butter, salt, molasses, eggs, and cold milk to the mixture. Mix well.
Bake and serve
Pour the mixture into a well-buttered dish.
Bake for one hour.
Serve with cream or butter.
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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Butter + molassestop 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 thickens the milk as it cooks and gives the pudding its body.
- Eggs
- Eggs set during baking, giving the pudding a firmer, custard-like structure.
- Molasses
- Molasses adds sweetness, a deep brown color, and a rich flavor.
- Milk
- Milk provides the liquid that the cornmeal thickens and the eggs set.
The step that matters
Gradually pour the hot milk over the Indian meal. Adding hot milk slowly while stirring lets the cornmeal disperse evenly. Dumping it in at once can leave lumps that never fully smooth out during cooking.
“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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