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Dessert

Ginger Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, sugar, milk, eggs, butter, lemon juice, and preserved ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Ginger Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Sift the baking powder, salt, and flour together.

  2. Mix the chopped ginger thoroughly into the flour.

  3. Add the sugar, melted butter, lemon juice, beaten eggs, and milk.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a large mold or individual molds.

  2. Steam for two hours in a large mold or one hour in individual molds.

  3. Serve with lemon 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. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the pudding as it sets.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set firm during steaming.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the pudding rise and turn light.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding a tender crumb.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, moist texture.
Preserved ginger
Provides the main spicy flavour and aroma of the pudding.

The step that matters

Steam for the full time in the correct mold. Steaming gently sets the eggs and flour into a moist, cohesive pudding. Using the wrong mold size or cutting the time short can leave the centre wet and underset, while overcooking can make it dry and rubbery.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, milk, butter, egg, sugar, lemon):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, butter, egg, sugar, lemon. 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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