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Dessert

Whortleberry Pudding

A pudding made from whortleberries, flour, eggs, salt, and milk, boiled in a bag.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Whortleberry Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Wash and spread the berries in a dish.

  2. Gradually stir in half the flour, being careful not to mash the berries.

  3. Break in the eggs and add the salt and the remaining flour.

  4. Add enough milk to make a batter as thick as for pancakes.

Boil and serve

  1. Put the mixture in a well-floured bag and place it in boiling water.

  2. Boil for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter together around the berries.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set as it cooks.
Whortleberries
Supply the fruit and moisture that flavour the pudding.
Milk
Loosens the flour into a batter with the consistency of pancake batter.

The step that matters

Keeping the berries whole while stirring in the flour. Mashing the berries releases their juice into the batter, which thins it and colours the pudding unevenly. Folding the flour in gently keeps the fruit intact.

“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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