Skip to main content
Dessert

Indian Fruit Pudding

A pudding made with milk, cornmeal, molasses, and fruit, boiled for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,104 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Indian Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Make a batter with hot milk and enough cornmeal to achieve a stiff consistency.

  2. Stir in molasses and salt.

  3. Mix in chopped apples or huckleberries.

Boil and serve

  1. Tie the mixture in a wet cloth, leaving room for expansion.

  2. Place in boiling water and boil for three hours.

  3. Serve with sweet sauce.

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 + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Molasses + appletop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together970 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Provides the body and stiff structure that holds the pudding together while it cooks.
Hot milk
Hydrates the cornmeal so it forms a smooth, workable batter.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and a deep, rich flavour to the pudding.
Sweet apples or huckleberries
Add moisture and fruity flavour throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Tie the mixture in a wet cloth, leaving room for expansion.. Cornmeal swells as it cooks, so the cloth must be loose enough to allow expansion. A cloth that is packed tight can burst or squeeze the pudding into a dense mass. Keeping the cloth wet helps it release cleanly and prevents it sticking.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, molasses. 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.

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesMolasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipes