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Dessert

Boiled Indian Pudding

A boiled pudding made with molasses, milk, eggs, suet, Indian meal, spices, and served with a butter, wine, nutmeg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Boiled Indian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Warm the molasses and milk together in a pot.

  2. Beat the eggs and gradually stir them into the molasses and milk mixture.

  3. Add the chopped beef suet and enough Indian meal to create a thick batter.

  4. Mix in the cinnamon, nutmeg, and grated lemon peel thoroughly.

Boil and serve

  1. Dip a cloth into boiling water, shake off excess, and dust lightly with flour.

  2. Place the mixture into the cloth, tie it up, leaving room for the pudding to swell.

  3. Boil the pudding for three hours.

  4. Serve hot with a sauce made of drawn butter, wine, and nutmeg.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set firm as it cooks.
Indian meal
Thickens the batter and gives the pudding its body and structure.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Molasses
Provides sweetness, dark color, and a deep caramel-like flavor.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid that hydrates the meal into a batter.

The step that matters

Leaving room in the cloth for the pudding to swell. Cornmeal and eggs expand as they cook and steam. If the cloth is tied too tightly, the pudding can burst or cook unevenly, so the bundle needs slack to allow for expansion.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, milk, egg, beef, cinnamon, nutmeg, flour. 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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