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Solid Indian Corn Pudding

A thick pudding made from barley meal, Indian corn, and pounded red herrings, seasoned with salt, vinegar, pepper, and sweet herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 128 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Solid Indian Corn Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the barley base

  1. Boil water in a large pot.

  2. Mix in barley meal and cook until thick like jelly.

  3. Season with salt, vinegar, pepper, and sweet herbs.

  4. Add pounded red herrings and stir well.

Prepare the samp and serve

  1. In a separate pot, prepare samp by soaking Indian corn in water and wood ashes for 10-12 hours, then rinse and cook until swollen and burst.

  2. Combine the samp with the barley mixture and serve immediately.

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. Barley + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together128 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

  3. Barley + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together897 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Barley + vinegartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together102 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Barley meal
Thickens the water into a stiff, jelly-like base that gives the pudding its body.
Indian corn (samp)
Provides the main starchy bulk and chewy texture once soaked and cooked until burst.
Red herrings
Adds a strong, salty, savory flavor to the pudding base.

The step that matters

Soaking the Indian corn in wood ashes. Soaking corn in an alkaline solution such as wood ashes loosens the hull and softens the kernels, so they swell and burst when cooked. Skipping or shortening the soak leaves the samp hard and unevenly cooked.

“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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