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Dessert

Gingerbread Pudding

A moist pudding made from flour, bread crumbs, suet, mixed peel, ginger, treacle, milk, and optional egg, baked or steamed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Gingerbread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. In a basin, mix the flour, bread crumbs, ginger, and baking powder.

  2. Add the chopped suet and mixed peel to the dry ingredients.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the treacle, egg, and milk, then pour this mixture over the dry ingredients. Mix well until the mixture is moist.

Cook

  1. Boil or steam for 2 to 4 hours, or bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the liquid and give the pudding a soft, tender body.
Treacle
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the pudding rises and lightens.

The step that matters

Mixing the wet and dry ingredients until moist. Mixing only until the batter is evenly moist keeps the crumb tender. Over-mixing can develop gluten in the flour, making the pudding dense, while too little liquid leaves dry pockets.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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