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Dessert

Ginger Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, bread crumbs, sugar, ginger, eggs, milk, salt, grated ginger, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Ginger Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a basin, combine flour, suet, bread crumbs, sugar, diced ginger, beaten eggs, and milk if needed.

  2. Mix well and pour into a thickly buttered and sugared mold, filling it no more than an inch from the top.

Steam and serve

  1. Cover with buttered paper and place in a saucepan of boiling water, ensuring the water comes within an inch of the top.

  2. Steam for 2 hours.

  3. Serve with a white sauce flavored with ginger syrup and diced ginger.

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 + 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and set into a firm, light structure as they cook.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender while it steams.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together.
Bread crumbs
Soak up moisture and add body, giving the pudding a softer crumb.
Preserved ginger
Supplies the main flavor and pockets of chewy sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Keeping the water boiling and at the right level while steaming. Steaming relies on steady, gentle heat around the mold. If the water stops boiling or drops below the mold's level, the pudding cooks unevenly and can turn heavy or soggy. Overfilling the mold also leaves no room for the batter to rise.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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

More ginger pudding recipes

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