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Dessert

Baked Indian Pudding

A baked pudding made with milk, Indian meal, molasses, butter, salt, ginger, cinnamon, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Baked Indian Pudding

Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. 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.

Prepare

  1. Wet the Indian meal with cold water.

  2. Pour the boiling milk over the meal to scald it.

  3. Add the molasses, butter, salt, ginger, and cinnamon.

  4. Let the mixture cool, then add the egg.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 hours.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Molasses + gingertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Indian meal
Cornmeal that thickens the milk and gives the pudding its body as it bakes.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornmeal thickens and that bakes into a custard-like set.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and a deep caramel-like flavor.
Egg
Helps set the pudding and bind it into a firm, sliceable texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, rounder mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the egg. Adding the egg to a very hot mixture can scramble it or cause uneven setting. Cooling first lets the egg blend smoothly and set evenly during baking.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, molasses, butter, egg, cinnamon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, molasses, butter, egg, cinnamon. 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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