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Dessert

Ginger Pudding

A steamed pudding made with sweet milk, butter, ginger, sugar, baking soda, cream of tartar, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Ginger Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the sweet milk, butter, ginger, sugar, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

  2. Add flour gradually until the mixture thickens.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam for 2.5 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.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to release gas, helping the pudding rise and turn light.
Cream of tartar
Acts with the baking soda as a leavening acid, producing bubbles that lighten the batter.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the texture and gives the pudding a tender crumb.
Flour
Provides starch and structure that thickens the batter and holds the pudding together.

The step that matters

Adding the flour gradually. Flour added all at once can form lumps that do not fully hydrate. Adding it slowly while mixing gives a smooth batter with even thickness, so the starch sets evenly during steaming.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sugar, cream, flour. 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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