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Dessert

Boiled Corn-meal Pudding

A boiled pudding made from cornmeal, molasses, milk, eggs, suet or butter, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Boiled Corn-meal Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Warm the molasses and milk together in a pot.

  2. Beat the eggs and gradually stir them into the molasses and milk mixture.

  3. Add the chopped beef suet or butter and enough cornmeal to create a thick batter.

  4. Stir in the cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, and salt until well combined.

Boil and serve

  1. Dip a cloth into boiling water, shake off excess, and lightly flour it.

  2. Pour the mixture into the cloth, tie it up, leaving room for the pudding to swell.

  3. Boil the pudding for three hours.

  4. Serve hot with a sauce made of drawn butter, wine, and nutmeg.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Molasses + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Provides sweetness and dark flavor, and moisture for the batter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set as the pudding cooks.
Cornmeal
Forms the bulk of the pudding and gives it a grainy, sturdy texture.
Beef suet or butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, moist crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to lighten the pudding as it cooks.

The step that matters

Leaving room in the cloth for the pudding to swell. The batter expands as it cooks and the leavening gases form. If the cloth is tied too tightly, the pudding can be squeezed and become dense or burst the cloth.

“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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