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Dessert

Boiled Indian Pudding

A sweet pudding made with molasses, milk, eggs, beef suet, Indian meal, spices, and served with butter, wine, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 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 grated lemon peel until well combined.

Boil and serve

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

  2. Place the mixture in 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. 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help the pudding set firm when boiled.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and a deep, rich flavor to the pudding.
Indian meal
Provides the body of the batter, thickening it so the pudding holds its shape.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it cooks.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, loosening the batter with liquid.

The step that matters

Leaving room in the cloth. Cornmeal batters expand as they heat and the starch swells. Tying the cloth too tightly can trap that expansion, so the pudding may burst or cook unevenly.

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.

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