Skip to main content
Dessert

Blueberry Pudding

A steamed blueberry pudding made with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, milk, and blueberries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Blueberry Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the baking powder with the flour.

  3. Add the eggs, salt, and milk to the creamed mixture and stir until combined.

  4. Flour the blueberries and gently fold them into the batter.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam for 2 hours.

  3. Serve with hard 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 richness and tenderness by coating flour and carrying flavor into the crumb.
Sugar
Creams with butter to aerate the batter and adds sweetness and gentle browning.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the pudding rise and become light.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the pudding as the batter cooks.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set during steaming.
Blueberries
Add moisture, tartness, and bursts of fruit flavor throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Flouring the blueberries before folding. Flour coats the berries so they are less likely to sink to the bottom and bleed color. Folding gently keeps the batter from deflating and the berries evenly distributed.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes