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Dessert

Ginger and Bread Pudding

A steamed bread pudding flavored with preserved ginger and ginger syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Ginger and Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Soak the crumb of French roll in milk for 2 hours.

  2. In a bowl, mix the soaked roll, preserved ginger, beaten eggs, powdered sugar, and ginger syrup.

  3. Beat the mixture for 20 minutes.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold and cover with buttered writing paper.

  2. Steam over fast-boiling water for 1.5 hours.

  3. Carefully turn out and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Ginger + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together950 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ginger and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set into a firm, sliceable pudding as they cook.
French roll crumb
Soaks up the milk and gives the pudding its soft, bready body.
Preserved ginger
Adds chewy pieces and a strong spicy flavour throughout the pudding.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the pudding and dissolves evenly into the egg and milk mixture.

The step that matters

Beating the mixture for 20 minutes. Long beating incorporates air and distributes the eggs and crumb evenly, giving a lighter, more uniform texture. Under-beating can leave a dense pudding with uneven pockets of egg.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, syrup. 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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