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Dessert

Whortleberry Pudding

A thickened pudding made from whortleberries, molasses, salt, baking soda, and flour, boiled for hours and served warm with butter and syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Molasses and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,429 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Whortleberry Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Combine whortleberries, molasses, salt, and baking soda in a large pot.

  2. Add flour gradually until the batter is thick enough for a spoon to stand up in it.

  3. Boil the mixture for 3 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve warm with butter and syrup.

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. Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Whortleberries
Provide the fruit and moisture that make up the body of the pudding.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and a deep, dark flavour to the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to lighten the pudding as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it holds its shape while boiling.

The step that matters

Adding the flour gradually. Flour thickens the batter as it is added, so adding it all at once can leave lumps or an uneven texture. Stopping when a spoon stands up in the batter gives the intended consistency.

“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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