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Dessert

Baked Indian

A pudding made with Indian meal, milk, molasses, and optional raisins, baked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Baked Indian

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the pudding base

  1. Stir 1 cup of Indian meal into 1 part of a quart of milk.

  2. In a pot, heat the remaining milk with 1 teaspoon of salt until boiling.

  3. Add the Indian meal mixture, stirring constantly for several minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and mix in 1 cup of molasses and 1½ cups of cold milk.

Bake

  1. Pour into a buttered pudding dish and bake at 300°F (150°C) for 4 hours or overnight.

  2. Add raisins after the pudding has been baking for 1 hour if desired.

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

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

  2. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  4. Butter + raisintop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,630 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  5. 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 and gives the pudding its body as it cooks and bakes.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the cornmeal absorbs and that sets into a custard-like texture.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and a deep caramel-like flavor to the pudding.

The step that matters

Stirring the cornmeal into boiling milk. Cornmeal can clump and scorch on the bottom of the pot if it is not stirred constantly. Keeping it moving while it thickens gives a smooth, evenly cooked base before baking.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, molasses, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

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