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Dessert

Whortleberry Pudding

A baked pudding made with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, baking soda, sour milk, and blueberries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Whortleberry Pudding

Ingredients

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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the sour milk and add to the mixture.

  4. Gradually add flour to create a good batter consistency.

  5. Fold in the floured whortleberries.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish and bake for 1 hour.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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 sugar to trap air and add richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the batter as it sets in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that lifts the pudding as it bakes.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds moisture and tang.
Flour
Forms the structure of the batter, setting as the pudding bakes.
Whortleberries (blueberries)
Add juicy bursts of fruit flavour and moisture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in the sour milk and add to the mixture.. Baking soda needs an acid to react and release gas. Dissolving it fully in the sour milk before mixing spreads the reaction evenly, so the pudding rises without pockets of soda or a bitter taste.

“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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