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Dessert

Gingerbread Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, flour, treacle, ginger, lemon rind, baking powder, egg, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon 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 ↓

Gingerbread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour and suet together.

  2. Add the baking powder, treacle, well-beaten egg, grated lemon rind, and milk. Mix until well combined.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Boil for 3 hours.

  3. Serve with 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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Suet
Adds richness and a tender, moist crumb as it melts during cooking.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together.
Treacle
Adds sweetness, dark color, and a rich molasses flavor.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps give the pudding its set structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the batter so the pudding rises lightly.

The step that matters

Boil for 3 hours. Steaming gently over a long period cooks the batter through evenly and keeps it moist. Boiling too hard or letting the pot boil dry can leave the pudding uneven or tough, so the water level should be kept up during the cook.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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