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Dessert

Boiled Ginger Pudding

A sweet pudding made with molasses, sweet milk, raisins, flour, eggs, spices, and butter, boiled or steamed until cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Boiled Ginger Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix molasses, sweet milk, raisins, flour, eggs, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and butter until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  3. Boil or steam for 2.5 hours until cooked through.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Provides dark sweetness and moisture, and gives the pudding its characteristic color and flavor.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure that sets the pudding as the starches cook.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set as it cooks.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to help the pudding rise and lighten.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and helps hydrate the flour into a batter.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil or steam for 2.5 hours until cooked through. Steady gentle heat over a long period cooks the batter through evenly. Keep the water simmering and topped up so the pudding does not dry out or turn heavy and underdone in the center.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, milk, raisin, flour, egg, cinnamon, clove):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, milk, raisin, flour, egg, cinnamon, clove. 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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