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Dessert

Baked Pumpkin Pudding

A baked pudding made with molasses, brown sugar, sweet milk, stewed pumpkin, ginger, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pumpkin and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,158 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Baked Pumpkin 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 the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the molasses and sweet milk.

  2. Add the brown sugar and ground ginger, stirring until combined.

  3. Gradually stir in the beaten eggs.

  4. Slowly add the stewed pumpkin until the mixture forms a thick batter.

Bake

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

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. Pumpkin + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,158 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Molasses + gingertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Milk + pumpkintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  5. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set into a firm, sliceable pudding when baked.
Stewed pumpkin
Adds moisture, body and the main pumpkin flavour to the thick batter.
Molasses
Provides sweetness, dark color and a rich, deep flavour.
Sweet milk
Supplies liquid that thins the batter and carries the other ingredients.
Ground ginger
Adds warm, spicy aroma that complements the pumpkin and molasses.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs gradually. Stirring the beaten eggs in slowly lets them blend evenly into the batter. Adding them all at once can leave lumps and uneven setting during baking.

Swap the pumpkin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Pumpkinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, sugar, milk, ginger, egg. 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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