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Dessert

Preserved Ginger Pudding

A steamed pudding made with butter, flour, milk, egg yolks, preserved ginger, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Syrup and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Preserved Ginger Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter and flour together over low heat.

  2. Gradually mix in the boiling milk while stirring continuously.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks, chopped preserved ginger, and its syrup.

Finish and steam

  1. Whisk the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture.

  2. Pour the pudding into a mold and steam for 1½ 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. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 and flour
Form a roux that thickens the milk into a smooth, stable base.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the custard base, adding richness and body.
Egg whites
Whisked to stiff peaks and folded in, they lighten the pudding and help it rise.
Preserved ginger
Provides the main flavor, with its syrup adding sweetness and aroma.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold air that gives the pudding its lightness. Stirring them in vigorously or letting them deflate before folding releases that air and leaves the pudding dense.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

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