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Dessert

Cherry Pudding

A sweet pudding made with butter, sweet milk, canned cherries, and a cherry sauce thickened with corn starch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Cherry Pudding

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 ↓

Cherry Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, mix the butter, sweet milk, canned cherries, and salt.

  2. Steam the mixture for one hour.

Make the sauce

  1. Combine cherry juice and boiling water in a saucepan.

  2. Dissolve corn starch in a little cold water.

  3. Add the dissolved corn starch to the saucepan.

  4. Stir in sugar and butter.

  5. Cook until thickened.

  6. Serve the pudding with the 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cherry + walnuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Cherry + corntop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together241 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Corn + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together349 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the cherry juice and water into a sauce as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the cherry sauce.
Canned cherries
Provide fruit flavor and pieces throughout the pudding.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and richness to the pudding batter.

The step that matters

Dissolve corn starch in a little cold water. Corn starch clumps if it goes straight into hot liquid. Dissolving it in cold water first lets it disperse evenly, so it thickens the sauce smoothly when added to the saucepan.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, cherry, corn, sugar. 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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