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Dessert

Ginger Cake Pudding

A baked ginger cake made with molasses, butter, brown sugar, ginger, cream, and flour, served with a cold butter‑sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Ginger Cake 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.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix together molasses, butter, brown sugar, ground ginger, and cream until well combined.

  2. Gradually add flour until the mixture is stiff enough to bake.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) until done.

  2. Serve with a cold sauce made by creaming together sugar and butter.

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

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

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

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

  3. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture and a rich, sweet, slightly bitter flavor to the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that lets the batter set into a firm, cakey pudding when baked.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the batter and body in the cold sauce.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and deepens the caramel-like flavor of the molasses.
Ground ginger
Supplies the warm, spicy aroma that defines this cake pudding.

The step that matters

Adding the flour gradually. Flour must be added in stages so the batter reaches a stiff but mixable consistency. Adding it all at once can make lumps and an uneven, dense texture once baked.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

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