Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓
Blackberry Mush
Ingredients
Directions
Cook the blackberries
Pick over the blackberries and place them in a kettle.
Add the sugar and water.
Bring the mixture to a boil.
Add the flour dissolved in a little cold water.
Cook until thickened.
Mold and serve
Remove from heat and mold.
Serve with cream.
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.
-
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Blackberries
- Provide the main fruit flavor, color and bulk of the dish.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the blackberries.
- Flour
- Thickens the mixture as its starch swells and sets when heated.
The step that matters
Add the flour dissolved in a little cold water.. Flour must be fully dispersed in cold liquid before it goes into the hot mixture, because dry flour dropped into hot liquid clumps. Starch then swells and thickens as the mixture heats, so the thickening is smooth only if the flour is well dissolved first.
“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 Cake431 recipes
Pound Cake373 recipes
Orange Bundt Cake349 recipes
Spice Cake344 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.