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Dessert

Plain Baked Indian Pudding

A baked pudding made with sweet milk, Indian meal, molasses, ginger, salt, and cold milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Molasses and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,116 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Plain Baked Indian Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the pudding

  1. Scald the sweet milk in a large pot.

  2. Stir in the Indian meal, molasses, ginger, and salt.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

Bake and finish

  1. After 30 minutes, stir in the cold milk.

  2. Reduce the oven temperature to 300°F (150°C) and bake for 4 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.

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. Molasses + gingertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Milk + gingertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,519 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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 thickens the milk as it bakes, giving the pudding its body and set.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornmeal swells into and cooks down into a custard.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and a deep brown color as the pudding bakes slowly.
Cold milk
Added partway through baking to add moisture and soften the set texture.

The step that matters

Stirring in the cold milk after 30 minutes. Adding cold milk after the cornmeal has begun to thicken cools the mixture and keeps it from setting unevenly, while the long low bake then firms it into a smooth, moist pudding.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, molasses):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovefits about as well
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, molasses. 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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