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Dessert

Peach or Berry Pudding

A baked fruit pudding made with eggs, butter, sugar, sour milk, baking soda, flour, and sliced peaches or berries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Peach 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 bowl, beat together the eggs, butter, and sugar.

  3. Add the sour milk and baking soda, mixing well.

  4. Stir in enough flour to create a stiff batter and beat until smooth.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a baking pan and pour in half of the batter.

  2. Layer the sliced peaches or berries on top.

  3. Pour the remaining batter over the fruit.

  4. Bake until done and serve with hot 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. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + peachtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together860 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Sour milk
Provides moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acidity to produce gas that lifts the pudding.
Flour
Forms the stiff batter that gives the pudding its body when set.
Peaches or berries
Add fruit flavor and moisture that soften into the batter during baking.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda to the sour milk. Baking soda needs an acid to react and release carbon dioxide. The sour milk supplies that acid, so the amount of soda should match its acidity. Too much soda leaves a bitter, soapy taste, and too little leaves the pudding dense.

Swap the peach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, sugar, milk, flour):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, sugar, milk, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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