Why it works: Milk and molasses are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,243 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓
Boiled Corn Meal Pudding, Without Eggs
Ingredients
Directions
Make the pudding
In a large bowl, stir the Indian meal and salt into the boiling milk.
Add the molasses and chopped suet, mixing well.
Stir in the dissolved baking soda.
Boil and serve
Tie the mixture tightly in a cloth, leaving room for it to swell.
Boil for 4 hours.
Serve with sweet 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.
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 + molassestop 21% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together7,243 recipes
Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Indian meal
- Cornmeal provides the main body and structure of the pudding as it cooks.
- Molasses
- Adds sweetness, deep color, and a rich, slightly bitter flavor.
- Suet
- Adds fat, which gives the pudding a moist, rich texture.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the molasses's acidity to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
The step that matters
Tie the cloth with room to swell. The mixture expands as it cooks and gas forms from the baking soda. If it is packed too tightly in the cloth, it can burst or cook dense.
“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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