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Dessert

Blackberry Pudding

A steamed pudding made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder, salt, water, egg whites, and blackberries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour 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 ↓

Blackberry Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Gradually add the sugar and the beaten yolks of the eggs.

  3. In another bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

  4. Add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture alternately with the cold water, mixing well.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered mold, adding blackberries throughout.

  2. Steam for 1.5 hours.

  3. Serve with blackberry hard 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. Butter + flourtop 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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to form a tender, aerated base for the batter.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter; whipped whites lighten its texture.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming so the pudding rises and becomes light.
Blackberries
Add fruity flavor and moisture scattered through the pudding.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Egg whites hold air bubbles that give the pudding its lightness. Vigorous stirring deflates them, leaving a denser pudding.

“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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