Skip to main content
Dessert

Boiled Indian Pudding

A boiled pudding made with molasses, milk, eggs, beef suet, Indian meal, cinnamon, nutmeg, and lemon zest.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Indian 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 and enough Indian meal to create a thick batter.

  4. Stir in the cinnamon, nutmeg, and lemon zest until well combined.

Boil and serve

  1. Dip a cloth into boiling water, shake off excess water, and place the mixture in the cloth.

  2. Tie the cloth securely, leaving room for the pudding to swell.

  3. Boil the pudding for three hours.

  4. Serve hot with drawn butter mixed with 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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 color, and its flavor defines the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the pudding as it cooks.
Beef suet
Adds fat and richness, keeping the pudding moist as it boils.
Indian meal
Thickens the batter and gives the pudding its body and texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the batter.

The step that matters

Leaving room in the cloth. The pudding swells as it cooks, and a cloth tied too tightly can restrict expansion and burst or squeeze the pudding out of shape. Keeping the cloth loose lets the batter rise and set evenly in the boiling water.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

More indian pudding recipes

Baked 36Boiled 26Steamed 12Apple 8New England 4Plain 4 See all 344 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesMolasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipes