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Dessert

Ginger Pudding

A steamed pudding made with eggs, buttermilk, flour, ginger, brown sugar, raisins, citron, molasses, butter, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Ginger Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liquids

  1. Dissolve 1 teaspoon of baking soda in hot water and stir into the buttermilk.

  2. Beat the buttermilk mixture with the molasses.

Make the batter

  1. Add the molasses and buttermilk mixture to the beaten egg yolks, sugar, and butter while foaming.

  2. Mix in 1½ tablespoons of ground ginger and spices to taste.

  3. Gradually add the flour and beaten egg whites alternately until the batter is very stiff.

  4. Flour the raisins and finely chopped citron and almonds, then mix them into the batter.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into buttered molds, filling them not too full.

  2. Steam the molds for 2 to 3 hours.

  3. Serve with hot sauce.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Buttermilk + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Ginger + raisintop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten whites trap air, giving the stiff batter lift and a light, tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that sets the pudding's body after steaming.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the batter and softens the crumb.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and deep colour and flavour.
Buttermilk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to produce gas that helps the batter rise.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps keep the crumb soft.

The step that matters

Filling the molds not too full. Steaming makes a leavened batter expand as the gas it holds warms and the structure sets. Overfilled molds can overflow or become dense where the batter cannot rise freely.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, buttermilk, flour, sugar, raisin, butter, molasses. 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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