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Dessert

Cherry Pudding

A baked pudding made with flour, cherries, and sugar, cooked in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Cherry Pudding

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 ↓

Cherry Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Make a dough with flour, baking powder, salt, and enough milk or water to form a paste.

  2. Roll out the dough to ¼ inch thick.

Assemble the pudding

  1. Butter a large bowl and line it with the dough, leaving enough to fold over the top.

  2. Fill the bowl with stoned cherries and sprinkle with sugar.

  3. Gather the dough over the top.

  4. Sprinkle lightly with flour.

  5. Cover with a linen cloth, securing it with string.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the bowl in a pot of boiling water and cook for 1.5 hours.

  2. Serve with sweet 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + sugartop 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the dough's structure, setting into a firm wrapper around the fruit.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking, helping the dough rise and become light.
Stoned cherries
Provide the main filling, releasing juice that moistens the dough as it steams.
Sugar
Sweetens the cherries and adds flavour to their juices.
Butter
Greases the bowl so the pudding releases cleanly after steaming.

The step that matters

Sealing the cloth over the bowl. A loose cloth lets boiling water seep into the bowl and soak the dough. Securing the linen tightly keeps the pudding moist and evenly steamed.

“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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