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Dessert

Indian Baked Pudding

A baked pudding made with sweet milk, butter, eggs, Indian meal, raisins, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Indian Baked Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the Indian meal while the milk is boiling, then let it stand until warm.

  3. In a large bowl, combine the milk mixture with the beaten eggs, raisins, and sugar.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°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.

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

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

  2. Butternut + raisintop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 it set into a firm, sliceable custard.
Indian meal
Thickens the hot milk and gives the pudding its body and grainy texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing tenderness and flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning on the baked surface.
Raisins
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Stir in the Indian meal while the milk is boiling. Cornmeal added to boiling liquid thickens quickly by swelling its starch; adding it to cooler milk can leave lumps. Stirring constantly keeps the mixture smooth before the eggs are added.

Swap the butternut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Butternutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, egg, raisin, sugar. 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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