Name: Baked Blackberry Pudding
Ingredients: 1 pint milk; 2 eggs; 1 quart flour (or enough for a thick batter); ½ cup bakers' yeast; ¼ teaspoon salt; 1 teaspoon baking soda dissolved in boiling water; nearly 1 quart blackberries, dredged with flour

Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Baked Blackberry Pudding

Ingredients

1 pint milk
2 eggs
1 quart flour (or enough for a thick batter)
½ cup bakers' yeast
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda dissolved in boiling water
nearly 1 quart blackberries, dredged with flour

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

Make the batter and let it rise in a warm place for 4 hours.

Add the fruit

When very light, gently stir in the dredged blackberries.

Bake and serve

Pour the mixture into a buttered dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.
Cover with white paper if it crusts over too quickly.
Turn out and serve with sweet 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.

Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 thick batter structure that holds the blackberries and sets as it bakes.
Eggs: Add structure and richness, helping the pudding set and hold together.
Milk: Provides moisture and loosens the batter to a pourable consistency.
Bakers' yeast: Produces gas during the rising, making the batter light and airy.
Baking soda: Reacts with acid and heat to add lift and help the pudding rise.
Blackberries: Add fruit flavor, sweetness and moisture to the batter.

The step that matters

Letting the batter rise until very light. Yeast needs enough time in a warm place to produce gas. Under-rising leaves the pudding dense, while the batter must still be gently handled so the gas bubbles are not knocked out.

“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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Baked Blackberry Pudding