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Dessert

Steamed Blackberry Pudding

A steamed pudding made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking soda, nutmeg, and blackberry jam or fresh berries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Steamed Blackberry Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and add them to the creamed mixture.

  3. Alternately add the flour and beaten egg whites to the mixture.

  4. Stir in the cream or milk, baking soda, nutmeg, and blackberry jam or berries.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a mold and steam for 2 hours.

  2. Serve with hard 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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + blackberrytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together203 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air, giving the pudding a light, tender crumb and rich flavor.
Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter and whipped whites add lift and structure as the pudding sets.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it sets during steaming.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidic ingredients in the batter to produce gas that helps the pudding rise.
Blackberry jam or fresh blackberries
Adds fruity sweetness, acidity, and moisture with a deep berry flavor throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Egg whites must be beaten to the right stiffness and added alternately with the flour so the batter stays airy. Overmixing deflates the foam and produces a dense pudding instead of a light one.

Swap the blackberry

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, flour, cream, nutmeg. 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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