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Dessert

Fruit or Berry Pudding

A baked pudding made with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, milk, baking powder, and fruit or berries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Fruit or 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 large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Stir in the milk and baking powder.

  5. Gradually add the flour, mixing until smooth.

  6. Fold in the fruit or berries, sprinkling 1 tablespoon of flour over them to prevent sinking.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish.

  2. Bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown.

  3. Serve warm with sauce.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the pudding a tender crumb.
Eggs
Add structure as they set, and help bind the batter.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the heat, helping the pudding rise.
Fruit or berries
Add moisture, flavor and acidity to the pudding.

The step that matters

Fold in the fruit with flour. Fruit is heavy and wet, so it sinks through the batter. Tossing it in flour helps it cling and stay suspended while the batter sets in the oven.

“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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