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Dessert

Whortleberry Pudding

A steamed pudding made with eggs, milk, flour, and whortleberries, served hot with butter and molasses or sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Whortleberry Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs until thick.

  2. Gradually add the flour and milk, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the whortleberries and add salt to taste.

Bag and boil

  1. Rinse a pudding bag and flour the inside.

  2. Pour in the batter, tie the bag, leaving 2-3 inches for expansion.

  3. Boil for 2 hours and serve hot with butter and molasses or 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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Eggs
Beaten eggs add structure and help the pudding set and hold together.
Flour
Starch forms the body of the pudding and gives it a firm, sliceable texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, softening the flour into a smooth batter.
Whortleberries
Add moisture, tartness and colour that run through the pudding as it cooks.

The step that matters

Leaving room in the pudding bag. The batter swells as it heats and the flour thickens around it, so leaving 2-3 inches of space prevents the bag from bursting during the long boil.

“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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