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Dessert

Baked Indian Pudding

A sweet, thick pudding made from milk, cornmeal, suet, eggs, molasses, sugar, raisins, ginger, cloves, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Baked Indian Pudding

Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Baked Indian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the cornmeal base

  1. Heat 2 quarts of milk in a granite kettle over steam until very hot.

  2. In a bowl, mix 5 heaping tablespoons of cornmeal with 1 cup of cold milk, then stir this mixture into the hot milk.

  3. Stir constantly until the cornmeal is thoroughly cooked.

  4. Add ½ pound of chopped suet and stir briskly, then remove the kettle from the stove.

  5. Stir in 1 pint of cold milk and let the mixture cool completely.

Add the flavourings and bake

  1. Once cooled, add 3 well-beaten eggs, 1 tablespoon of molasses, ½ cup of brown sugar, ¼ pound of seeded raisins, 1 teaspoon of ginger, a pinch of cloves, and 1 teaspoon of salt.

  2. Stir thoroughly and pour the mixture into a baking pan.

  3. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 1½ hours.

  4. Serve warm, spooning some of the juice over the pudding.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Raisin + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 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

Cornmeal
Thickens the hot milk into a firm, spoonable pudding body as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornmeal thickens and the custard-like texture depends on.
Eggs
Bind the pudding and help it set into a sliceable custard as it bakes.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a moist, tender texture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and caramel-like depth to the pudding.
Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture and a robust, slightly bitter sweetness.

The step that matters

Cooking the cornmeal thoroughly while stirring constantly. Raw cornmeal tastes gritty and will not thicken properly unless it is fully cooked in hot liquid. Constant stirring prevents lumps and scorching on the bottom of the kettle.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

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