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Dessert

Ginger-bread Pu Dding

A pudding made from grated stale bread, suet, flour, ginger, and treacle, boiled for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,564 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Ginger-bread Pu Dding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Grate the stale bread and mix it with the finely chopped suet and flour.

  2. Add the ground ginger and mix well.

  3. Stir in the treacle until fully combined.

Cook

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold.

  2. Boil the mold for 2 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. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Bread + gingertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Bread + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Bread and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,383 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

Stale bread
Gives the pudding body and soaks up moisture as it steams.
Suet
Adds fat for a rich, tender texture and moisture.
Flour
Helps bind the mixture so it holds its shape when cooked.
Treacle
Adds sweetness, dark colour and a deep molasses flavour.
Ground ginger
Provides the warm spiced aroma that defines the gingerbread flavour.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour. 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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