Name: Another Way to Make Millet Pudding
Ingredients: ¼ pound millet; 1 quart whole milk; 3 ounces brown sugar; ¼ pound butter, cut into small pieces; 1 teaspoon grated nutmeg

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 ↓

Another Way to Make 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

Wash the millet thoroughly.

Make the pudding

Mix the millet with the milk, brown sugar, butter, and nutmeg.
Pour the mixture into a well-buttered dish.

Bake

Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 1.5 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.

Millet + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together33 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,685 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together24,377 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
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: Provides the body of the pudding as it cooks and softens in the milk.
Whole milk: Forms the liquid base that the millet cooks in, giving a rich, creamy texture.
Brown sugar: Adds sweetness and a caramel-like depth of flavor.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.

Swap the millet

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

Almondfits better
Chestnutfits better
Walnutfits about as well
Milletthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, butter, nutmeg. 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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Another Way to Make Millet Pudding