Name: Cherry Puree Pudding
Ingredients: 2.5 pounds Kentish cherries; ½ pint claret; 12 ounces sugar; butter for frying; 12 pieces of bread; pastry cream (see recipe No. 203)

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cherry Puree Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cherry purée

Remove the stalks from the cherries and pound them to break the stones.
Place the cherries in a small pan with claret and sugar; bring to a boil.
Skim off the scum as it rises and boil for about 10 minutes.
Rub the mixture through a sieve and pour it into a soufflé dish.

Assemble and bake

Cut the bread into egg shapes.
Fry the bread in butter.
Arrange the fried bread in circular rows in the purée.
Fill the gaps with pastry cream.
Bake for about 30 minutes.
Serve in the soufflé dish.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Bread + creamtop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,789 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Kentish cherries: Provide the main fruit flavour and the bulk of the purée.
Sugar: Sweetens the cherry mixture and helps balance its tartness.
Claret: Adds liquid and wine flavour that moistens and seasons the cherries as they cook.
Bread: Forms the structure of the pudding, soaking up the purée and holding its shape.
Pastry cream: Fills the gaps between the bread, adding richness and a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Skimming and boiling the cherry mixture. Skimming removes the scum that rises as the fruit heats, keeping the purée clean in flavour and colour. Boiling for the stated time reduces the liquid so the purée is thick enough to hold the bread in place.

“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.