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Dessert

Baked Indian Pudding

A baked pudding made with milk, Indian meal, sugar, spices, flour, eggs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Baked Indian Pudding

Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 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 batter

  1. Boil 1 quart of milk.

  2. Pour the hot milk over 1 pint of sifted Indian meal and stir well.

  3. Add 3 tablespoons of sugar, 2 tablespoons of chopped butter or suet, ¼ teaspoon salt, 2 teaspoons cinnamon, and 1 teaspoon ginger.

  4. Gradually mix 3 large tablespoons of wheat flour with 1 pint of milk until smooth, then stir into the pudding mixture.

  5. When the mixture is lukewarm, add 3 well beaten eggs.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 2 to 3 hours.

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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + wheattop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together537 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  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

Indian meal
Forms the thick, starchy body of the pudding as it bakes and sets.
Milk
Provides liquid that hydrates the cornmeal and gives the pudding its creamy moisture.
Eggs
Bind the pudding and help it set into a custard-like texture when baked.
Wheat flour
Thickens the mixture further and helps keep it smooth and stable.
Butter or suet
Adds fat for richness and a tender, moist crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs when the mixture is lukewarm. Eggs added to very hot mixture can scramble and become grainy, while a lukewarm mixture lets them blend in smoothly and set evenly in the oven.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, butter, cinnamon, wheat, flour, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, butter, cinnamon, wheat, flour, 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.

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