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Dessert

West Indian Pudding

A pudding made from stale sponge biscuits, sweetened cream, eggs, and preserved ginger, baked in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter 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 ↓

West Indian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Crumble the sponge biscuits into a bowl and pour the boiling cream over them. Let soak for 1 hour.

  2. Beat the mixture with a fork and add the beaten eggs.

Prepare the mold

  1. Butter a small pudding mold and line it with the sliced preserved ginger.

  2. Gently fill the mold with the pudding mixture by spoonfuls to avoid disturbing the ginger.

  3. Cover the mold and tie it securely in a cloth.

Steam and serve

  1. Place the mold in a saucepan on an upside-down plate and surround it with 3 inches of boiling water. Keep the water boiling.

  2. Once cooked, turn the pudding out and serve with the hot syrup from the ginger poured over it.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Biscuit + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Biscuit + gingertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together175 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Biscuit + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Egg + buttertop 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

Sponge biscuits
Soak up the cream to form the soft, sponge-like body of the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set when heated, giving the pudding its firm structure.
Boiling cream
Softens the biscuits and adds richness and moisture to the pudding.
Preserved ginger
Adds aroma and spicy flavor, and its syrup adds sweetness to the serving.

The step that matters

Keep the water boiling around the mold. Steady steam heat cooks the egg custard evenly and sets it gently. If the water drops, the pudding cooks unevenly and may turn out dense or undercooked.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (biscuit, cream, egg, butter):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, cream, egg, butter. 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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