Name: A Series of Economical Puddings
Ingredients: quarter teaspoonful of either ginger; three gills of milk; three ounces of sugar; three eggs; one-third full of water; half your sugar; cinnamon

Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

A Series of Economical Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mould

Choose a mould, basin, tart-dish, or tin cake-pan.
Butter the mould and fill lightly with any of the following ingredients: stale buns, muffins, crumpets, pastry, white or brown bread sliced and buttered, remains of sponge cakes, macaroons, ratafias, almond cake, gingerbread, biscuit of any kind, previously soaked.

Make the custard

Add a quarter teaspoonful of ginger, a little mixed spice or cinnamon, grated orange, lemon, or a few drops of any essence you choose.
Beat three eggs well. Add three gills of milk for every quarter mould.
Mix well and fill the mould nearly to the rim.

Bake or boil and serve

Bake, boil, or simmer: either bake the pudding, or put it into a saucepan one-third full of water with the lid on, and let simmer for about an hour.
Pass a knife around the inside of the basin or mould, turn out the pudding, and pour over melted butter with a little sugar, lemon juice, or spirit sauce.

Fruit pudding

For fruit pudding: Butter and line a basin with paste, rolling it to a thickness of half an inch.
Get a pint of gooseberries and three ounces of sugar. Take half the fruit, lay it at the bottom of the basin, then add half your sugar.
Put the remainder of the gooseberries and the remainder of the sugar on top. Draw the paste to the centre, join the edges well together, put a cloth over the whole, tying it at the bottom.
Boil in plenty of water. After boiling, take out of the saucepan, untie the cloth, turn out onto a dish or leave in the basin.
Serve with butter sugar over.
A thin cover of paste may be rolled round and put over the pudding.
Ripe cherries, currants, raspberries, plums, apples may be used in the same way, requiring less sugar.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

284Calories

14 gProtein

13 gFat

28 gCarbs

Counts 5 of 6 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 5 portions

Ingredient	Portion assumed	kcal
Milk	1 cup (244ml) whole	149
Egg	1 large egg (50g)	78
Sugar	1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated	49
Cinnamon	1 tsp ground (2.6g)	6
Ginger	1 tsp grated fresh (2g)	2
Water	not in our table	0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

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. See the original page.

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.

Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,380 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,655 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together14,054 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Eggs: Bind the custard and set the pudding as it cooks.
Milk: Provides liquid that softens the bread and forms the custard.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the fruit.
Gooseberries (in the method): Supply tart fruit flavour and moisture to the pudding.