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Dessert

Cold Berry Pudding

A cold dessert made by layering buttered stale bread with stewed huckleberries and blackberries, topped with cream and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Cold Berry Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the berries

  1. Combine huckleberries, blackberries, water, and sugar in a pot.

  2. Stew the mixture for a few minutes until juicy.

Assemble the pudding

  1. Cut stale bread into thin slices and spread with butter.

  2. In a buttered pudding dish, layer buttered bread and hot stewed berries, repeating until full.

  3. Top with a final layer of stewed berries.

  4. Optionally, add a soft frosting over the top.

Serve

  1. Serve cold with thick cream and 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. Butter + sugartop 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

Stale bread
Absorbs the berry juices and holds the layers together as the pudding sets.
Huckleberries and blackberries
Provide the main fruit flavour, juice, and bulk of the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the berries and balances their tartness.
Butter
Coats the bread and dish to add richness and keep the bread from sticking.

The step that matters

Stewing the berries until juicy. Stewing softens the fruit and releases its juice before assembly. Berries that are underdone leave the bread dry, while overcooked fruit can turn to mush and make the layers soggy.

“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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