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Dessert

Old-fashioned Blackberry Mush

A sweet blackberry dish thickened with flour and served cold with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Old-fashioned Blackberry Mush

Ingredients

Directions

Combine and warm

  1. In a kettle, combine the blackberries, molasses, and sugar.

  2. Heat the mixture until warm.

Thicken

  1. Mix the flour with a little water to form a paste, then add it to the kettle.

  2. Boil for 3 to 4 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve cold with cream.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Molasses + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,408 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 and most of the volume of the mush.
Molasses
Adds dark, rich sweetness and a deeper, slightly bitter flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the blackberries.
Flour
Thickens the fruit juices into a mush once the paste is heated.

The step that matters

Boiling after adding the flour paste. Starch in flour thickens fully only when it reaches a boil, and boiling long enough cooks out its raw, floury taste. Stopping early can leave the mush thin or chalky.

“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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