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Dessert

Canadian Pudding

A steamed pudding made with Indian meal, milk, eggs, lemon rind, sugar, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,481 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Canadian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding base

  1. Mix the Indian meal with a little cold milk.

  2. Infuse the lemon rind in the remaining milk for 15 minutes, then strain the boiling milk over the meal.

  3. Return the mixture to the saucepan, add the sugar, and simmer gently for 10 minutes.

Steam and serve

  1. When cool, add the well-beaten eggs and pour the mixture into a well-buttered mold or basin decorated with raisins.

  2. Steam for 2½ hours, then serve with a suitable sauce.

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. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  4. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Indian meal
Cornmeal thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and firm set.
Eggs
Eggs bind the cooled mixture and help it set firm when steamed.
Milk
Milk forms the liquid base that the cornmeal thickens into a custard-like mixture.
Castor sugar
Sugar adds sweetness and softens the set texture of the pudding.

The step that matters

Add the eggs only when the mixture is cool. Eggs added to very hot mixture can scramble or curdle, leaving lumps instead of a smooth, evenly set pudding.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits about as well

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