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Dessert

Ginger Pudding

A steamed dessert made with flour, sugar, eggs, milk, butter, and preserved ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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. Combine the milk, sugar, and butter in a saucepan.

  2. Heat until it simmers, then remove from heat.

  3. Stir in the flour quickly for about 3 minutes.

  4. Gradually add the eggs, mixing well.

Steam and serve

  1. Grease a mold and pour the batter into the mold.

  2. Steam for about 1 hour.

  3. Serve hot with custard sauce flavored with ginger syrup.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Starch thickens and, with the eggs, sets the batter into a firm pudding.
Eggs
Proteins coagulate during steaming, giving the pudding structure and a tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender texture.
Milk
Provides liquid that hydrates the flour and keeps the pudding moist.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the pudding tender and moist.
Preserved ginger
Adds the main spicy, aromatic flavor throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour quickly. Flour added to hot liquid can clump into lumps if not stirred vigorously. Cooking it briefly in the hot mixture gelatinizes the starch and helps the batter thicken smoothly.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, egg, milk, 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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