Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Boiled Indian Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
In a bowl, combine sour milk, eggs, and baking soda.
Stir in cornmeal until the mixture is slightly thicker than pancake batter.
Cook
Pour the mixture into a bag and steam or boil for 1 hour.
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 + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sour milk
- Its acidity reacts with baking soda to lift the pudding and adds a tangy flavor.
- Eggs
- They bind the batter and help it set into a tender, sliceable pudding.
- Baking soda
- It reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lightens the texture.
- Cornmeal
- It thickens the liquid as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and grainy texture.
The step that matters
Stirring in the cornmeal to the right thickness. Cornmeal thickens as it absorbs liquid and sets during cooking. The batter should be slightly thicker than pancake batter, since it thickens further during steaming or boiling. Too much cornmeal makes the pudding stiff and dry.
“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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