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Dessert

Cranberry Pudding

A boiled cranberry jam encased in rice, served with sugar and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Cranberry Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cranberry jam

  1. Boil cranberries in sugar and water until they break down into a jam.

Shape and wrap

  1. Form a large ball with the jam and cover it with clean, dry rice.

  2. Wrap the rice-covered ball in a floured cloth and tie it securely.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil the wrapped pudding for 1 hour.

  2. Serve with sifted sugar and butter on the side.

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. Flour + buttertop 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. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Cranberries
Provide the tart fruit base that cooks down into a thick jam.
Sugar
Sweetens the cranberries and helps them break down into a jam.
Rice
Coats the jam ball, giving the pudding a starchy, absorbent outer layer.
Flour
Dusts the cloth so the wrapped pudding releases cleanly and keeps its shape.

The step that matters

Wrapping the ball tightly. If the cloth is loose or the tie is weak, water enters during boiling and the pudding can become soggy or fall apart. A firm wrap holds the shape while the starch in the rice sets.

“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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