Name: Baked Indian Pudding
Ingredients: 1 quart milk; ½ pint cornmeal; 4 eggs; 2 cups sugar; 2 tablespoons butter

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

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

Boil the milk in a pot.
Stir in the cornmeal and let it stand to cool.
Beat the eggs and add them to the mixture.
Mix in the sugar and butter until well combined.

Bake

Pour the mixture into a baking dish.
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.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Milk: Provides the liquid base that the other ingredients thicken and set into a pudding.
Cornmeal: Thickens the liquid as it cooks and gives the pudding its coarse, dense body.
Eggs: Set during baking to bind the pudding and give it a custard-like firmness.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps balance the flavor of the cooked cornmeal and milk.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and a softer, smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Baking for the full 3 hours at 300°F. A long, low bake lets the eggs and starch in the cornmeal set slowly into a firm, creamy custard. Pulling it early can leave the center loose and watery, while the gentle heat helps prevent the eggs from curdling.

“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.