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Dessert

Very Nice Ginger Pudding

A steamed ginger-flavored pudding made with butter, sugar, milk, flour, eggs, ginger, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Very Nice Ginger Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the milk and eggs, mixing well.

  3. In another bowl, combine the flour, ginger, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until smooth.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam the pudding 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and add richness and tender texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it sets.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set firm during steaming.
Cream of tartar
Acidic component that reacts with baking soda to help the pudding rise.
Baking soda
Releases carbon dioxide with the acid, leavening the batter for a lighter crumb.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding flour in portions and stirring until smooth prevents lumps and overmixing. Overworked flour develops gluten, which can make the pudding tough, while the leavening needs an evenly mixed batter to rise uniformly.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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