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Dessert

Cold Berry Pudding

A chilled dessert made with stale bread, butter, berries, water, sugar, and thick cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

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

  2. In a pot, combine huckleberries and blackberries with water and sugar; stew for a few minutes until juicy.

Assemble and serve

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

  2. Top with a final layer of stewed berries.

  3. 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
Forms the structure that soaks up the berry juices as the pudding sets.
Huckleberries
Provide the main fruit flavor and juice that moistens the bread.
Blackberries
Add more fruit flavor and juice, with tartness balancing the sweetness.
Butter
Coats the bread and dish, adding richness and helping prevent sticking.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a cool, fatty contrast to the tart berries when served.

The step that matters

Stewing the berries until juicy. The berries need enough heat to release their juice and soften, so the bread can absorb it and the pudding holds together when cold. Undercooked berries leave the pudding dry or loose.

“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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