Skip to main content
Dessert

Indian Pudding

A baked milk and Indian meal pudding with butter, eggs, ginger, salt, and syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Indian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Bring 1 quart of milk to a boil.

  2. Stir in enough Indian meal to make a thick batter along with 1 tablespoon of butter.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then add 4 beaten eggs, 1 tablespoon of ginger, 1 teaspoon of salt, and ½ cup of syrup.

  4. Mix well and pour into a buttered brown earthen dish.

Bake

  1. Bake for 3 hours at 300°F (150°C).

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

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

  2. Ginger + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together950 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + gingertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,519 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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 into a batter and gives the pudding its body.
Eggs
Eggs bind the batter and help it set as it bakes.
Milk
Milk forms the liquid base that the cornmeal thickens and the eggs set.
Syrup
Syrup adds sweetness and a deep, caramel-like flavor.
Butter
Butter adds richness and fat that softens the texture.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs to the cooled batter. If the batter is still hot when the beaten eggs go in, the eggs can scramble and leave a grainy texture. Letting it cool first keeps the custard smooth as it sets in the oven.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, egg, syrup. 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.

More indian pudding recipes

Baked 36Boiled 26Steamed 12Apple 8New England 4Plain 4 See all 344 →

You might also like

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesSoft Ginger CakeSoft Ginger Cake56 recipes