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
Make the custard base
Scald the milk in a saucepan.
Stir in the cornmeal while the milk is boiling.
Let the mixture stand until it is blood warm.
Bake and serve
Add the butter, eggs, raisins, and sugar, and stir well together.
Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake for 1.5 hours.
Serve with sauce.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,481 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,155 recipes
Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).
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Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Eggs
- Bind the mixture and help it set into a firm, sliceable pudding as it bakes.
- Cornmeal
- Thickens the hot milk into a porridge-like base that gives the pudding its body.
- Sweet milk
- Forms the liquid base that the cornmeal thickens and the eggs set.
- Butter
- Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a softer, more tender texture.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the pudding and helps brown its surface as it bakes.
- Raisins
- Add pockets of chewy sweetness distributed through the baked pudding.
The step that matters
Let the mixture stand until blood warm. Adding eggs to very hot milk can scramble them, leaving lumps. Cooling to blood warm lets the eggs blend smoothly before baking sets the pudding.
Swap the raisin
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, egg, sugar):
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits about as well
- Coconutfits about as well
- Raisinthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, egg, sugar. 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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