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Dessert

Gingerbread Pudding

A baked pudding made with sour milk, eggs, molasses, sugar, butter, baking soda, flour, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Gingerbread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Mix the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine sour milk, beaten eggs, molasses, sugar, and butter.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in a little hot water and add it to the mixture.

  3. Stir in spices to taste.

  4. Gradually add flour until the batter is as thick as pound cake.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish and bake until set.

  2. Serve with a rich 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to lift the batter and adds moisture.
Eggs
They bind the batter and set during baking to give the pudding its structure.
Molasses
It adds sweetness, moisture, and the dark color and deep flavor of gingerbread.
Baking soda
It reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas that makes the pudding rise.
Butter
It adds fat that enriches the batter and gives a tender crumb.
Flour
It provides the starch and gluten structure that sets the batter into a firm pudding.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda fully before adding it. Baking soda must be dissolved evenly in the hot water so it reacts uniformly with the acidic sour milk and molasses. Undissolved clumps leave pockets of bitter soda and uneven rising, so the pudding can turn out patchy in texture and taste.

“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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