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Dessert

Jam Pudding

A baked pudding made with blackberry jam, sugar, butter, flour, egg yolks, baking soda, sour milk, topped with a meringue and served with butter-sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Jam Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make and bake the pudding

  1. In a bowl, mix blackberry jam, sugar, butter, flour, egg yolks, baking soda, and sour milk until smooth.

  2. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake until set.

Top and brown

  1. Beat the egg whites until frothy, then gradually add 1 cup of sugar and spread on top of the pudding after baking.

  2. Return to the oven to brown the topping.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, cream together 1 cup of butter and 2 cups of sugar, then stir in whisky if desired.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Blackberry + whiskytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Blackberry + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together315 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Blackberry + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together522 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

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

Blackberry jam
Provides sweetness, fruit flavour and moisture to the pudding base.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the pudding together as it sets.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help the pudding set into a tender body.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the topping its light, airy texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that helps the pudding rise.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds tenderness to the crumb.

The step that matters

Returning the pudding to the oven to brown the topping. Meringue-style toppings can weep or turn dense if overbaked, and they only brown properly when the oven is hot enough. Watch closely so the top colours without drying out.

Swap the blackberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Blackberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour, egg, milk, sauce, whisky. 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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