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Dessert

Cranberry Pudding

A boiled pudding made from cranberries, sugar, water, rice, and served with sugar and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cranberry Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cranberry filling

  1. Boil cranberries in sugar and enough water to cover until they break down into a jam.

  2. Form a large ball with the cranberry mixture and cover it with the washed rice.

Cook and serve

  1. Wrap the rice-covered ball in a floured cloth and tie it securely like a dumpling.

  2. Boil the pudding for 1 hour.

  3. Serve with sifted sugar and melted butter on the side.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Cranberries
Break down into a jam that gives the pudding its tart, fruity filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the cranberries and helps them break down into a thick jam.
Rice
Forms a starchy outer coating around the fruit ball as it cooks.

The step that matters

Tying the cloth. The cloth must be floured and tied firmly so the rice coating holds its shape and the ball does not fall apart or let water in while boiling.

“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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