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Dessert

Indian Pudding

A sweet cornmeal pudding made with milk, eggs, sugar or molasses, and allspice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

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.

Prepare

  1. Scald the cornmeal in 1 quart of milk.

Make the pudding

  1. Once cool, add the eggs, sugar or molasses, allspice, and salt, and mix well.

  2. Pour into a baking dish.

Bake

  1. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 3 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.

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

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

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

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  4. Milk + allspicetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,947 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sugar + allspicetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,938 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

Cornmeal
Thickens the milk as it scalds, giving the pudding its body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornmeal thickens and the eggs set.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the pudding into a soft, sliceable custard.
Sugar or molasses
Adds sweetness and a deeper, caramel-like flavor.

The step that matters

Baking low and slow. At 300°F for a long time, the eggs set gently without curdling or drying out, and the cornmeal fully softens. Baking too hot can cause the custard to crack or turn grainy.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar. 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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