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Dessert

Cranberry Pudding

A steamed cranberry and flour pudding served with sauce.

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 ↓

Cranberry Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Steam cranberries with water and sugar until soft.

  2. Make a biscuit dough with flour, butter, baking powder, and enough milk or water to form a soft dough.

  3. Roll out the dough to about ½ inch thick.

  4. Spread the cooled cranberries on the dough.

  5. Roll the dough up.

Steam and serve

  1. Butter the steamer.

  2. Place the roll in the steamer.

  3. Steam for 1 hour.

  4. Serve with a rich 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. 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. 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).

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

Cranberries
Provide the tart fruit filling that cooks down soft and sweetens with the sugar.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure through steaming.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the biscuit dough.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the dough rises and turns light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cranberries and balances their tartness.

The step that matters

Spreading the cooled cranberries on the dough. If the cranberries are still hot, they can soften the dough and make it sticky and hard to roll, and too much juice can make the roll soggy.

“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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