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Dessert

A Cold Berry Pudding

A cold dessert made with stewed berries, buttered bread, sugar, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

A Cold Berry Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fruit

  1. Combine the whortleberries, raspberries, blackberries, currants, and brown sugar in a pot.

  2. Stew over medium heat until the fruit is soft.

Assemble the pudding

  1. Slice the brick loaf of bread thinly.

  2. Spread each slice with butter.

  3. Cover the bottom of a serving dish with a layer of buttered bread slices.

  4. Add layers of the stewed fruit and buttered bread alternately until the dish is nearly full.

  5. Top with the remaining fruit mixture.

Rest and serve

  1. Let the pudding stand for 3 to 4 hours before serving.

  2. Serve with sugar and 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Currant + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Currant + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Whortleberries
Provide the main fruit flavor and juice that soak into the bread.
Raspberries
Add tart, aromatic fruit flavor and juice to the stewed filling.
Blackberries
Contribute body and deep fruit flavor to the stewed filling.
Currants
Add sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the fruit.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps draw out juice as it stews.
Bread
Absorbs the fruit juice and holds the layers together as the pudding sets.

The step that matters

Let the pudding stand 3 to 4 hours. The bread must soak up the fruit juices slowly to soften fully and set into a sliceable pudding. Serving too early leaves dry bread and loose juice.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, bread, butter, cream. 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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