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Dessert

Stewed Blackberry or Raspberry Juice

A fruit juice made by stewing berries, straining, and thickening with flour, milk, butter, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Stewed Blackberry or Raspberry Juice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Pick and wash the blackberries or raspberries.

  2. Stew the berries with ½ cup of water until soft.

  3. Pass the stewed berries through a sieve to extract the juice.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix flour and milk to make a thick paste.

  2. Bring the paste to a boil.

  3. Pour the berry juice into the paste.

  4. Add butter and sugar.

  5. Boil for a few more moments.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Blackberries or raspberries
Provide the main fruit flavour and colour of the juice.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the milk mixture into a paste that gives the drink body.
Unsalted butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the tart berries.

The step that matters

Pour the berry juice into the paste. Starch in the flour thickens only when heated, so the paste must be at a boil and the juice added carefully to avoid lumps; then boiling a few moments fully cooks the starch and removes raw flour taste.

“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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