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Dessert

Blueberry Pudding

A steamed or baked blueberry batter made with egg, butter, milk, sugar, flour, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Blueberry 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.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg and mix in the softened butter.

  2. Add the sweet milk, sugar, baking powder, and salt, and mix well.

  3. Gradually add flour until you achieve a very stiff batter.

  4. Gently fold in the blueberries, being careful not to crush them.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased tin or gem pans.

  2. Steam until a straw comes out clean, or bake at 350°F (175°C) until done.

  3. Serve hot with butter or any pudding 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. Milk + flourtop 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. Egg + flourtop 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

Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Flour
Builds the stiff batter's structure once it sets in the heat.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the batter so the pudding rises.
Blueberries
Add bursts of juicy fruit and moisture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the blueberries. Folding gently keeps the berries whole, so they don't crush and bleed purple streaks through the batter. A stiff batter also holds berries in place better than a loose one.

“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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