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Dessert

Blackberry Pudding or Other Bek

A blackberry pudding baked in a water bath with a batter of flour, blackberries, milk, syrup, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Blackberry Pudding or Other Bek

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix a little flour with the blackberries.

  2. In another bowl, combine the remaining flour with salt and baking soda.

  3. Add sweet milk and syrup or molasses to the dry ingredients, stirring to form a smooth batter.

  4. Gently fold in the blackberries to avoid breaking them.

Steam and serve

  1. Grease a mold with butter and pour in the batter.

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

  3. Boil for at least 2 hours without letting the water stop boiling.

  4. 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Milk + syruptop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,143 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the pudding as the batter sets.
Blackberries
Add fruit flavour, moisture and colour throughout the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the batter to help it rise.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour and loosens the batter into a smooth mixture.
Syrup or molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deep caramel-like flavour.

The step that matters

Keep the water boiling throughout steaming. Steaming relies on steady, continuous heat. If the water stops boiling, the pudding cooks unevenly and may turn out dense or underdone. Keeping the water level below the mold's top prevents water entering while still allowing steam to cook 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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