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Dessert

Millet Pudding

A baked pudding made from millet, sugar, nutmeg, milk, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Millet Pudding

Why it works: Millet and nutmeg share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 33 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Millet 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.

Prepare the mixture

  1. Wash and pick the millet seed.

  2. In a bowl, combine millet, sugar, nutmeg, milk, and melted butter.

  3. Butter your baking dish and pour the mixture in.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 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. Millet + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together33 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Millet + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together63 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

Millet seed
Grains soften and absorb the liquid, giving the pudding its body as it bakes.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the millet absorbs and that cooks into a soft, creamy set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour.

The step that matters

Baking until set. The grains and milk thicken and set as the pudding bakes. Underbaking leaves it loose and runny, while overbaking dries it out and makes it grainy, so check that the centre has firmed.

Swap the millet

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Milletthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, nutmeg, milk, 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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