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Dessert

Ginger Pudding

A baked ginger-flavored pudding made with molasses, butter, flour, spices, buttermilk, eggs, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Ginger 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, egg yolks, spices, butter, and flour.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the buttermilk and add to the mixture.

  4. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking 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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Molasses + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Molasses + buttermilktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together526 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

Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and a dark, rich flavor to the pudding.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter as it bakes.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and whites, beaten to peaks, add lightness and structure.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in buttermilk and molasses to produce gas that helps the pudding rise.
Buttermilk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds moisture and tenderness.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air bubbles that give the pudding lift. Stirring vigorously or overmixing deflates them, leaving a dense result.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, butter, flour, cinnamon, buttermilk, 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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