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Dessert

Ginger Pudding

A steamed pudding made with milk, sugar, butter, flour, eggs, and preserved ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Ginger Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a saucepan, bring the milk, sugar, and butter to a boil.

  2. Once the milk rises, remove it from heat and quickly stir in the flour.

  3. Stir the mixture over low heat for a few minutes until it no longer sticks to the sides of the pan.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg yolks and chopped ginger until well combined.

  5. Gently fold in the whipped egg whites until incorporated.

Steam and serve

  1. Thoroughly butter a mold.

  2. Pour the pudding mixture into the mold.

  3. Cover tightly.

  4. Steam for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  5. Serve with German sauce flavored with 2 teaspoons of ginger syrup.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 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).

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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter and whites, whipped and folded in, give the pudding a light, airy texture.
Flour
Starch cooks into the butter and milk base, setting the structure of the pudding as it steams.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, moist crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to the soft, moist texture of the pudding.
Preserved ginger
Provides the main aroma and spicy flavor of the pudding.

The step that matters

Fold in the whipped egg whites gently. Whipped egg whites hold air bubbles that give the pudding its lift. Stirring or beating them in vigorously knocks out that air, leaving a dense, heavy pudding.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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