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Dessert

A Cold Fruit Pudding

A chilled pudding made from stewed berries, sugar, and layered bread, served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

A Cold Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Stew the whortleberries, raspberries, blackberries, currants, and brown sugar together.

Layer and press

  1. Cut the brick loaf into thin slices.

  2. Line a deep bowl with the sliced bread.

  3. Pour a layer of the fruit mixture into the bowl.

  4. Add a layer of thin bread on top of the fruit.

  5. Repeat layering until the bowl is full.

  6. Place a plate on top of the bowl that fits within its circumference.

  7. Add a heavy weight on top of the plate.

  8. Let the mixture stand for several hours or overnight.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream or cream 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Currant + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Bread + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,789 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes
  5. Sugar + breadtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,638 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Bread
Forms the layers that soak up the cooked fruit juices and hold the pudding together when pressed.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps draw out and blend its juices during stewing.
Whortleberries
Supply the main fruit flavor and the juice that soaks into the bread.
Raspberries
Add fruit flavor and juice that soaks into the bread layers.
Blackberries
Add fruit flavor, body and juice that soaks into the bread layers.
Currants
Add tart fruit flavor and juice that soaks into the bread layers.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture stand under weight. The pressed weight compresses the layers so the bread absorbs the fruit juice evenly and sets into a firm, sliceable pudding. Standing for several hours or overnight gives the bread time to fully soak through.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, bread, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, bread, cream. 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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