Skip to main content
Dessert

Berry Pudding

A baked berry pudding with a buttery sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Berry Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix 1 cup sugar and 2 tablespoons butter until creamy.

  3. Add 3 cups flour, 2 tablespoons baking powder, a pinch of salt, 1 cup milk, and 1 egg; mix well.

Bake

  1. Butter a pudding dish and layer it thick with berries.

  2. Pour the batter over the berries and bake for about 20 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, combine 3 tablespoons sugar, 2 tablespoons butter, 1 egg, and flavoring; mix well.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it heats, making the batter rise and turn light.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps set its structure as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown slightly in the oven.
Berries
Add moisture and fruity flavor that soaks into the batter as it bakes.

“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.

More berry pudding recipes

You might also like