Skip to main content
Dessert

Baked Indian Pudding

A baked pudding made with milk, cornmeal, molasses, sugar, spices, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Baked Indian Pudding

Why it works: Ginger and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,324 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Baked Indian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the pudding base

  1. Boil 1 pint of milk.

  2. Stir in 1 cup of sifted cornmeal while boiling.

  3. Remove from heat.

  4. Add ½ cup molasses, 2 tablespoons sugar, ½ teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon ginger, a little nutmeg, and 1 pint cold milk.

  5. Add 1 beaten egg and mix well.

Bake

  1. Pour into a baking dish while warm.

  2. Bake for 1 hour at 350°F (175°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.

  1. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Molasses + gingertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Cornmeal
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and grainy texture.
Molasses
Adds deep sweetness, dark color and a rich caramel-like flavor.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornmeal thickens and the baking sets.
Egg
Helps the pudding set into a firm, custard-like structure as it bakes.

The step that matters

Stirring the cornmeal into boiling milk. Cornmeal added to milk that is not boiling can clump into lumps. Adding it while the milk boils and stirring steadily lets the starch disperse and thicken evenly.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits about as well
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, molasses, sugar, nutmeg, egg. 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.

You might also like

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesMolasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipes