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Dessert

Preserved Ginger Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, flour, butter, eggs, milk, preserved ginger, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Preserved Ginger Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Boil the milk and pour it over the bread crumbs in a separate bowl.

  2. In another bowl, cream the butter, then stir in the flour and add the sugar.

  3. Mix in the chopped preserved ginger and beaten eggs.

  4. Combine this mixture with the bread crumbs and milk.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour into a greased basin, cover with greased paper, and steam for 1½ hours.

  2. Turn out and serve with custard flavored with ginger syrup. Enjoy hot or cold.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

Bread crumbs
Absorb the hot milk and form the soft, moist body of the pudding.
Eggs
Set when steamed, binding the mixture into a sliceable pudding.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Milk
Softens the crumbs and supplies moisture for a tender texture.
Flour
Adds a little structure so the pudding holds its shape.
Preserved ginger
Supplies sweet, spicy aroma and flavor throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steaming the covered basin. Steam heats the pudding gently and evenly, so the eggs set without drying. The greased paper cover traps moisture, and it keeps the basin's contents from being wet by the steam.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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