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Dessert

Huckleberry Pudding

A steamed pudding made with huckleberries, flour, eggs, milk, and sweetener.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Huckleberry Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pudding base

  1. Wet the brick loaf with boiling milk.

  2. In a bowl, combine the loaf, eggs, salt, and huckleberries.

  3. Boil the mixture for 1½ hours.

Make the batter

  1. Mix 1½ pints of sifted flour with a little of the fresh huckleberries.

  2. In another bowl, combine the remaining flour, salt, baking soda dissolved in sweet milk, and syrup or molasses to form a smooth batter.

  3. Gently fold in the berries without breaking them.

  4. Pour the batter into a buttered mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Place the mold in boiling water, ensuring the water does not reach the top of the mold.

  2. Keep the water boiling for at least 2 hours.

  3. Serve with boiled 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,540 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Brick loaf
Forms the bulk of the pudding and absorbs the milk to create a soft body.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure as they set during cooking.
Huckleberries
Add fruit flavour and moisture, and colour the pudding through the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter together as it steams.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the syrup or molasses to lighten the batter.
Syrup or molasses
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour, and helps brown the pudding.

The step that matters

Keeping the water boiling in the steaming step. The mold must be surrounded by steady boiling water that stays below its top. If the water drops or rises over the lid, the pudding cooks unevenly, may turn heavy, or water may seep into it.

“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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