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Dessert

Boiled Cherry Pudding

A boiled pudding made with cherries, milk, egg, flour, molasses, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Cherry Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Layer cherries in a pot.

  2. In a bowl, mix milk, egg, baking soda, salt, and enough flour to form a stiff dough.

  3. Pour the dough over the cherries.

Boil

  1. Add molasses to cover the mixture and pour in the water.

  2. Cover the pot tightly and boil for 30 minutes.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Cherries
Provide the fruit base and flavor that the dough cooks over.
Flour
Gives the dough its stiff structure so it holds together while boiling.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure as it sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses and milk to help the dough rise and lighten.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and a deep flavor to the pudding.

The step that matters

Cover the pot tightly. A tight lid keeps steam trapped so the dough cooks through by steam and boiling liquid rather than drying out at the surface. Letting steam escape can leave the top dry and the pudding underdone.

“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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