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Dessert

Indian Fruit Pudding

A pudding made from milk, cornmeal, molasses, currants, and baking soda, boiled for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,475 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Indian Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine hot milk and cornmeal to form a stiff batter.

  2. Stir in molasses, salt, and dissolved baking soda.

  3. Fold in currants.

Boil and serve

  1. Tie the mixture in a wet cloth, leaving room for expansion.

  2. Place in boiling water and boil for 3 hours.

  3. Serve with maple syrup.

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 + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Molasses + curranttop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,817 recipes
  3. Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Forms the bulk of the pudding and sets into a firm, sliceable body as it cooks.
Hot milk
Hydrates the cornmeal starch so the mixture forms a stiff, cohesive batter.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and moisture, and its acidity reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to release gas, lightening and raising the pudding.
Currants
Add small pockets of sweet, chewy fruit throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Tie the mixture in a wet cloth, leaving room for expansion.. The baking soda and molasses release gas as the pudding cooks, so the batter swells. Without room to expand, the cloth can burst or the pudding can become dense and misshapen.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, molasses. 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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