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Dessert

Baked Indian Pudding

A baked pudding made with milk, cornmeal, molasses, sugar, butter, spices, eggs, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Baked Indian Pudding

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 ↓

Baked Indian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Boil half the milk.

  2. Wet the cornmeal to a thin batter and stir in the boiling milk.

  3. When cool, add the remaining ingredients.

Bake

  1. Pour into a baking dish and bake for 3 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.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  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

Cornmeal
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its body.
Eggs
Set when baked, adding structure and a custard-like richness.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornmeal thickens and the eggs set.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, deep color and a caramel-like flavor.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, smoother texture.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Stirring the cornmeal batter into the boiling milk. Wetting the cornmeal to a thin batter first lets its starch disperse evenly. Stirring it into the boiling milk then thickens the mixture smoothly, without lumps that would form if dry cornmeal hit the hot liquid.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Clovethe original
  2. Allspicefits about as well
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Gingerfits less well

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