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Dessert

Plain Indian Pudding

A pudding made from Indian meal, milk, molasses, eggs, and optional suet, baked slowly.

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 ↓

Plain Indian 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. Scald the Indian meal with boiling water until thoroughly wet.

  2. Combine the wet Indian meal, cold milk, molasses, salt, and eggs in a large bowl and mix the ingredients well.

  3. If desired, add chopped suet for extra flavor.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 3 hours.

  3. After 30 minutes, stir the pudding from the bottom to prevent thickening.

  4. Serve warm with butter.

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 + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Molasses + eggtop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,879 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Indian meal
Cornmeal starch thickens as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and dense, spoonable texture.
Eggs
Proteins set during baking, holding the custard-like pudding together as it cools.
Cold milk
Forms the liquid base that gives the pudding its moisture and creamy richness.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, deep brown color, and a robust caramel-like flavor.

The step that matters

Stir the pudding from the bottom after 30 minutes. Cornmeal is heavier than the liquid and settles toward the bottom as it begins to thicken. Stirring redistributes it so the pudding bakes evenly instead of forming a dense, starchy layer underneath.

“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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