Skip to main content
Dessert

Millet Pudding

A baked millet pudding with milk, butter, sugar, lemon zest, spices, eggs, and shredded suet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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

  1. Wash the millet thoroughly.

  2. Place the millet in a baking dish and line the edges with crust.

Make the custard

  1. Pour in the milk until the dish is nearly full.

  2. Melt the butter and mix it with the milk, then add sugar, lemon zest, ginger, and nutmeg.

  3. Stir in the beaten eggs and shredded suet just before placing in the oven.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set and golden.

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. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Millet + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together25 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
Forms the body of the pudding, absorbing milk and softening as it bakes.
Eggs
Set during baking to give the pudding a firm, sliceable custard texture.
Whole milk
Provides the liquid that cooks the millet and forms the creamy custard base.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a smoother mouthfeel to the custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to browning on the baked surface.
Shredded suet
Adds fat that enriches the texture and flavour of the pudding.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs and suet just before baking. Beaten eggs begin to coagulate only when heated, so they should go in just before the oven. Adding them early risks uneven setting and a grainy or curdled texture in the custard.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against millet, milk, butter, sugar, lemon, nutmeg, egg. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesGinger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes