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Dessert

Delicate Indian Pudding

A milk-based pudding made with Indian meal, sugar, eggs, butter, and salt, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Delicate Indian Pudding

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 ↓

Delicate Indian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard base

  1. Boil the milk in a pot.

  2. Sprinkle the Indian meal into the boiling milk while stirring continuously for 12 minutes.

  3. Stir the butter into the milk and meal mixture.

Combine and bake

  1. In a separate bowl, beat together the eggs, sugar, and salt.

  2. Gradually pour the hot milk mixture into the egg mixture, stirring constantly.

  3. Pour the combined mixture into a baking dish and bake at 300°F (150°C) for one hour.

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

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base and, with the eggs, sets into a soft custard when baked.
Indian meal
Cornmeal thickens the hot milk and gives the pudding its body and grainy texture.
Eggs
Set during baking to give the pudding structure and a custard-like firmness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the texture of the set custard.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Gradually pour the hot milk mixture into the egg mixture, stirring constantly.. Adding hot liquid to eggs too quickly can scramble them. Pouring slowly while stirring gently raises the egg temperature evenly, so the mixture stays smooth and sets into a uniform custard.

“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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