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Dessert

Blackberry Pudding

A sweet pudding made from blackberries, flour, molasses, and butter, baked and served with a brandy‑nutmeg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Blackberry Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pudding

  1. Pick over the blackberries.

  2. Mix blackberries, flour, baking soda, molasses, and salt together without adding water.

  3. Put the mixture into molds and tie covers on.

  4. Boil for three hours.

Make the sauce

  1. Beat the butter and powdered sugar until creamy.

  2. Place the mixture over heat and stir in the egg yolks until thick.

  3. Work in the brandy and season with grated nutmeg.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Brandy + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the pudding together after boiling.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to release gas that lightens the pudding.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, moisture, and a deep flavor.
Blackberries
Provide fruit flavor and moisture throughout the pudding.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, creamy sauce texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they heat and set, giving it body.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolks into the warm butter and sugar. Egg yolk proteins set when heated, so the sauce thickens smoothly only with gentle heat and constant stirring. Too much heat or no stirring can make it curdle or grainy.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Allspicefits less well
  4. Clovefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, molasses, butter, sugar, egg, brandy. 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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