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Dessert

Indian Pudding

A sweet custard made from Indian meal, milk, molasses, butter, and spices, baked until curdled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. 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.

  1. Scald the Indian meal with boiling water and let it cook for 10 to 15 minutes.

  2. Combine the cooked meal with boiling milk, molasses, butter, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 300°F (150°C) for about 3 hours, or until the whey separates from the curd.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Molasses + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 and gives the pudding its body as it cooks.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and, with the long bake, creates the soft, custardy set.
Orleans molasses
Adds deep sweetness and a dark color, and flavors the pudding as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender texture.
Eggs (in the method)
Not listed in this record, so left out.

The step that matters

Long, low baking. Baking slowly at a low oven temperature lets the cornmeal starch swell and the milk proteins set gently, so the pudding turns creamy rather than tough or curdled. Pulling it too early leaves it runny.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Clovefits about as well
  3. Allspicefits less well
  4. Cardamomfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, molasses, butter, cinnamon. 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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