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Dessert

Preserved Ginger Pudding

A steamed pudding made with butter, flour, milk, egg yolks, preserved ginger, and folded egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Preserved Ginger Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for a few minutes.

  3. Gradually mix in the boiling milk, stirring continuously.

  4. Remove from heat and add the egg yolks and preserved ginger.

Finish and steam

  1. Whip the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture.

  2. Pour the mixture into a mold and steam for 1½ hours.

  3. Serve with custard sauce.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped until stiff, they trap air and lighten the pudding's texture.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help set the pudding as it steams.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk mixture into a structured base.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and forms the base with the flour.
Preserved ginger
Provides the main flavour and aroma, with a sweet, spicy bite.

The step that matters

Whip the egg whites until stiff. Under-whipped whites will not hold air, so the pudding comes out dense. Over-whipped whites turn grainy and collapse when folded. Fold gently to keep the air in the mixture.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, 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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