Skip to main content
Dessert

Ginger Pudding

A steamed pudding made with eggs, buttermilk, flour, ginger, brown sugar, raisins, citron, almonds, butter, molasses, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Ginger Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Dissolve 1 teaspoon baking soda in hot water and stir into buttermilk.

  2. Beat the buttermilk mixture with molasses.

  3. Add the foaming molasses and buttermilk to the egg yolks, sugar, and butter.

  4. Mix in 1½ tablespoons ginger and spices to taste.

  5. Gradually add flour and egg whites alternately until the batter is very stiff.

  6. Flour the raisins and finely chopped citron and almonds, then mix them into the batter.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into buttered molds, filling them not too full.

  2. Steam the molds for 2 to 3 hours.

  3. Serve with hot brandy sauce.

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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Buttermilk + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Ginger + raisintop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Add structure and richness, with the whites lifting the stiff batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together after steaming.
Buttermilk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to help the pudding rise.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a dark color and deep flavor.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture while deepening the flavor.

The step that matters

Folding in the flour and egg whites alternately. Adding flour and whites in turns keeps the whipped whites from deflating, which helps the pudding stay light. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour and makes the texture tough.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, buttermilk, flour, sugar, raisin, butter, molasses. 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

Steamed 11Preserved 6Plain 3 See all 105 →

You might also like

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesMolasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipes