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Dessert

Blackbeeey Pudding or Other Berries

A steamed berry pudding made with flour, berries, sweet milk, syrup, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Blackbeeey Pudding or Other Berries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix a little flour with the fresh berries.

  2. In another bowl, combine the remaining flour, salt, baking soda dissolved in sweet milk, and syrup or molasses to form a smooth batter.

  3. Gently fold in the berries without breaking them.

Steam and serve

  1. Grease a mold with butter and pour in the mixture.

  2. Place the mold in boiling water, ensuring the water does not reach the top of the mold.

  3. Boil continuously for at least 2 hours.

  4. Serve with boiled 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.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 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. Flour + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,540 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Milk + syruptop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,143 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together once cooked.
Fresh berries
Add moisture, flavour and colour to the pudding body.
Baking soda
Reacts with the syrup or molasses to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Syrup or molasses
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour, and keeps the pudding moist.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour and dissolves the baking soda into the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the berries. Gentle folding keeps the berries whole and the batter evenly textured. Vigorous mixing would crush the fruit, release its juice and colour the batter unevenly, and develop gluten, making the pudding dense.

“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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