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Dessert

Ginger Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 base

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Add the sugar and butter to the hot milk.

  3. Once boiling, stir in the flour and cook for about 5 minutes.

Finish and steam

  1. Allow the mixture to cool, then add the beaten eggs and chopped ginger.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased mold and steam for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Serve with custard sauce flavored with ginger syrup.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Starch that thickens the milk mixture and gives the pudding its body when cooked.
Eggs
Set during steaming to give the pudding structure and a tender, custardy crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the warm ginger flavor.
Preserved ginger
Provides the main aroma and spicy flavor of the pudding.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before adding the eggs. If the hot mixture is not cooled, the beaten eggs can scramble or cook unevenly instead of blending smoothly. Cooling first keeps the batter smooth so the eggs set evenly during steaming.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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

More ginger pudding recipes

Steamed 11Preserved 6Plain 3 See all 105 →

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