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Dessert

Preserved Ginger Pudding

A pudding made with bread crumbs, milk, butter, sugar, eggs, and preserved ginger, boiled for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Preserved Ginger Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Boil the milk and pour it over the bread crumbs.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add one egg at a time, beating well after each addition.

  3. Finely mince the preserved ginger and mix it with the soaked bread.

  4. Add the beaten eggs, sugar, and butter to the mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold and boil for 2 hours.

  2. Serve with custard 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the pudding and bind it into a firm, sliceable texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a soft, tender crumb to the pudding.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the hot milk and form the body of the pudding.
Milk
Supplies moisture that softens the bread and keeps the pudding moist.
Caster sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the creamed butter trap air for a lighter texture.
Preserved ginger
Contributes a sweet, spicy aroma and flavour throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boiling the pudding in the mold. The pudding must cook gently and evenly over a long time. If the water boils dry or the mold is not sealed, the pudding can dry out or turn heavy and uneven.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, butter, sugar, 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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