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Dessert

Baked Indian Pudding

A baked pudding made with eggs, milk, cornmeal, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Baked Indian Pudding

Why it works: Egg and milk 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 ↓

Baked 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.

Make the cornmeal base

  1. In a saucepan, heat the milk until scalding hot.

  2. Add the cornmeal and a little salt; boil for 5 to 10 minutes.

  3. Beat the egg yolks with the sugar until very light.

Assemble and bake

  1. Once the cornmeal mixture is cooked, pour it into a pudding dish and mix in the yolks and sugar.

  2. Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites with a little sugar, reserving some for the top.

  3. Brown in the oven at 350°F (175°C) and serve immediately with sweetened cream flavored with vanilla.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + milktop 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).

Sugar and milk 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich and set the custard, while whipped whites add lightness and airiness.
Cornmeal
Thickens the hot milk into a stiff base that gives the pudding its body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornmeal thickens and the eggs set into custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the beaten eggs become light and stable.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites hold air only when stiffly beaten, and overmixing or stirring them vigorously deflates the foam, so the pudding loses its lift. Fold gently so the batter stays airy as it bakes.

“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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