Skip to main content
Dessert

Blackberry Mush

A simple blackberry dessert made by mashing berries, sweetening, cooking, thickening with flour, and serving with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Blackberry Mush

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mash the blackberries in a bowl.

  2. Sweeten the mashed blackberries to taste.

Cook

  1. Cook the mixture over medium heat for 15 minutes, stirring constantly.

  2. Stir in enough flour to make the mixture stick together.

  3. Keep boiling the mixture while stirring.

Serve

  1. Pour into cups and let cool.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Blackberries
Supply the main fruit flavor, color and bulk of the mush.
Flour
Starch thickens the juices as it cooks, helping the mixture hold together.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the blackberries.

The step that matters

Stirring while the flour goes in and the mixture boils. Flour starch swells and thickens only when heated, and it clumps easily if added unevenly. Constant stirring spreads it through the hot juice so the mush thickens smoothly and does not scorch on the bottom of the pan.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes