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Dessert

Preserved Ginger Pudding

A steamed pudding made with veal fat, flour, almond milk, eggs, and finely chopped preserved ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Preserved Ginger Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Melt the veal fat in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour over low heat.

  3. Gradually mix in the almond milk while stirring.

  4. Beat the egg yolks and add them to the mixture.

  5. Fold in the finely chopped preserved ginger.

  6. Beat the egg whites until stiff and gently mix them in.

Steam and serve

  1. Grease a mold with almond oil and sifted sugar.

  2. Tie the mold down and steam for 2 hours.

  3. Serve with brandy or rum 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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Almond + gingertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Flour + milktop 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 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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air that lightens the pudding as it steams.
Egg yolks
Enrich the batter and help bind it as it sets.
Flour
Thickens the melted fat and milk into a base that holds the pudding's shape.
Veal fat
Adds richness and moisture, giving the pudding a tender texture.
Preserved ginger
Provides the main flavour and bits of chewy texture throughout.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites gently. Whipped egg whites hold air that makes the pudding light. Stirring them vigorously deflates the foam, leaving a dense result after steaming.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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