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Dessert

Raspberry Pudding

A boiled pudding made with butter, raspberry jam, sugar, flour, eggs, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Raspberry Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Add the sugar, flour, jam, beaten eggs, and baking soda.

  3. Beat the mixture together for 10 minutes.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour into a bowl or mold and boil for 1 hour.

  2. Serve with or without 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + raspberrytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Adds richness and a tender texture by coating flour and holding air when creamed.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the pudding's structure as it cooks.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the pudding its body.
Raspberry jam
Adds sweetness, fruit flavor, and moisture to the batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps keep it moist and tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic jam to produce gas that lightens the pudding.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture for 10 minutes. Beating combines the ingredients and traps air, but flour gluten develops with mixing. Beat until smooth and evenly combined, without overworking, to keep the pudding light rather than tough.

Swap the raspberry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, flour, egg):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Raspberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, egg. 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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