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Dessert

Ginger Pudding

A boiled pudding made with flour, suet, moist sugar, grated ginger, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Ginger Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil a large saucepan of water.

  2. Chop the suet finely after removing the skin.

  3. In a basin, mix the flour and chopped suet, rubbing them together to avoid lumps.

  4. Grate 2 large teaspoons of ginger.

  5. Add the grated ginger and moist sugar to the mixture and combine well.

  6. Butter a 1-pint basin and pour the mixture into it.

  7. Wring out a pudding cloth in hot and then cold water, sprinkle with flour, and cover the basin tightly.

Steam and serve

  1. Once the water is boiling, place the pudding in and boil for at least six hours.

  2. Carefully remove the basin, take off the cloth, and turn the pudding onto a hot dish.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Flour
Forms the bulk of the pudding and sets into a firm, sliceable structure as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender during long steaming.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps give the pudding a darker, richer flavour.
Grated ginger
Provides the main aroma and spicy flavour that defines the pudding.
Butter
Greases the basin so the cooked pudding releases cleanly.

The step that matters

Keep the cloth tightly sealed and the water boiling. A loose cover lets steam escape and water seep in, so the pudding can turn soggy or dry unevenly. Steady boiling keeps the heat constant over the long cooking time.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter. 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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