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Dessert

Cranberry Pudding

A baked pudding made with cranberries, bread crumbs, sugar, butter, and orange juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cranberry 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.

Assemble

  1. Butter a pudding dish.

  2. Layer the dish with crumbs, then cranberries, and then sugar, repeating until full.

  3. Top with a layer of crumbs.

  4. Pour the orange juice over the pudding and sprinkle with bits of orange peel and small pieces of butter.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the pudding and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. Remove the cover and let the pudding brown.

  3. Serve with either hard or liquid 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Orange + breadtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,084 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Orange + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Dry bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the layers and soak up the cranberry juices as the pudding bakes.
Cooked cranberries
Provide the tart fruit flavor and moisture that runs through the layers.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart cranberries and helps the top brown during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that softens the crumbs and aids browning on top.
Orange juice
Adds moisture and bright citrus acidity that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Remove the cover and let the pudding brown. Baking covered traps steam and keeps the top soft; uncovering lets dry heat brown the surface, which is the sugar and butter reacting with the crumbs.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sugar, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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