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Dessert

Gingerbread Pudding

A steamed pudding made from crumbled gingerbread, flour, molasses, sugar, almonds, milk, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Gingerbread Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the crumbled gingerbread and flour.

  2. Stir in the molasses, sugar, and pounded almonds.

  3. Combine the milk and beaten egg, then add to the mixture. Mix thoroughly and pour into a buttered dish.

Cook

  1. Boil or steam for 2.5 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 + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  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 + 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

Stale gingerbread
Forms the bulk of the pudding and gives it its spiced, sweet flavour.
All-purpose flour
Adds structure, helping the pudding hold its shape as it cooks.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps it set into a firm, cohesive texture.
Milk
Moistens the dry ingredients so they soften and hold together during cooking.
Almonds
Add richness and a nutty texture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Steaming or boiling for the full time. A long, gentle, moist heat lets the starches and egg set the pudding evenly through. Cooking too fast or with water boiling too hard can make the pudding uneven or cause the dish to crack or separate.

“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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