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Dessert

Berry Pudding

A dessert made by stewing berries with sugar and water, layered with buttered stale bread, and served with cream.

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 ↓

Berry Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a pot, stew the berries, sugar, and water together until heated.

  2. Cut the stale bread into thin slices and butter each slice.

Assemble and serve

  1. In a deep dish, layer the buttered bread and hot berry mixture, continuing until all ingredients are used.

  2. Set aside to cool and serve with cream and additional sugar.

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. 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. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Bread + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,789 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Berries
Provide the main flavor and the juice that soaks into the bread.
Bread
Absorbs the berry juice and gives the pudding its body as it softens.
Sugar
Sweetens the berries and helps draw out their juice.
Butter
Adds richness to the bread slices.

The step that matters

Setting aside to cool. As the pudding cools, the bread keeps soaking up the hot berry juice and the mixture firms up. Serving it too soon can leave it loose and watery.

“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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