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Ginger Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, butter, ginger, lemon, sugar, eggs, and preserved ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Ginger Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine bread crumbs, butter, ground ginger, lemon juice, and caster sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Stir until the butter melts.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a mixing bowl.

  4. Beat the egg yolks and add them to the mixture along with the chopped preserved ginger.

  5. Mix well and let it cool.

Finish and steam

  1. Whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gently fold the egg whites into the pudding mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered basin, leaving room for it to swell.

  4. Cover with buttered paper and a pudding cloth.

  5. Steam for 3 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream or 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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  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
Yolks enrich the base while whipped whites lighten the pudding and help it rise.
Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk and body of the pudding, soaking up butter and liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and carries flavour through the pudding.
Caster sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps give a tender, moist crumb.
Preserved ginger
Supplies the main ginger flavour and bits of chewy texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites hold air only when whisked to stiff peaks, and overmixing or stirring vigorously knocks that air out. Gentle folding keeps the pudding light instead of dense.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, lemon, sugar, 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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