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Dessert

Baked Indian Pudding

A baked pudding made with milk, Indian meal, molasses, eggs, butter, cinnamon, salt, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 pudding

  1. Wet the Indian meal with cold water.

  2. Pour the boiling milk over the meal.

  3. Once cooled, add the molasses, eggs, butter, cinnamon, salt, and ginger, and mix well.

  4. Pour into a baking dish.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

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

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

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Molasses + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 into a soft, spoonable pudding base.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the cornmeal absorbs and that sets into a custard-like body.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set into a firm, sliceable pudding when baked.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and deep color, along with a rich, slightly bitter flavor.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavor and a smoother, more tender texture.

The step that matters

Let the cornmeal cool before adding the eggs. Eggs added to very hot cornmeal mixture can scramble, leaving curdled specks instead of a smooth pudding. Waiting until the mixture has cooled lets the eggs blend in evenly and set gently in the oven.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, molasses, egg, butter, cinnamon. 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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