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Dessert

Ginger Pudding

A steamed pudding made with butter, flour, eggs, treacle, milk, ginger, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Ginger Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream the butter until smooth.

  2. Add the flour, eggs, treacle, milk, ginger, baking soda, and cream of tartar. Mix until well combined.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into a pudding mold.

  2. Steam for 2 hours.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + flourtop 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 + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Creamed with the sugar-free batter base to give richness and a tender, fat-based crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and moisture as the pudding sets.
Treacle
Adds sweetness, dark color and a rich molasses-like flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar and moisture to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with the baking soda, helping the pudding rise.

The step that matters

Mix the baking soda and cream of tartar into the batter. Baking soda and cream of tartar only release gas when combined with liquid, so they must be evenly mixed in and the pudding steamed promptly to trap the bubbles and rise properly.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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