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Dessert

Ginger Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, suet, flour, ginger, sugar, golden syrup, egg, and baking powder, served with a ginger sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Syrup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 173 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Ginger Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, combine bread crumbs, suet, flour, ginger, sugar, golden syrup, egg, and baking powder.

  2. Mix well and pour into a greased pudding mold.

  3. Steam the pudding for 3 to 4 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, boil water in a saucepan.

  2. Dissolve corn starch in a little water and add to boiling water.

  3. Stir in golden syrup and preserved ginger, cooking until thick.

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. Syrup + saucetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together173 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Ginger + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together412 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 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

Bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the pudding and give it body as it absorbs the wet ingredients.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during steaming.
Egg
Binds the mixture together and adds structure as it sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the pudding rise and lighten.
Corn starch
Thickens the sauce as it cooks in the boiling water.
Ginger
Provides the main aroma and spicy flavor of the pudding.

The step that matters

Steam the pudding for 3 to 4 hours. Steaming must be gentle and steady so the water does not run dry or boil hard. Gentle, sustained heat sets the egg and cooks the crumb and suet through without breaking the mold or making the pudding dense.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, flour, sugar, syrup, egg, corn, sauce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, sugar, syrup, egg, corn, sauce. 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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