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Dessert

Cranberry Pudding

A steamed pudding made with sugar, butter, eggs, milk, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, cranberries, served with a butter‑sugar‑cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Cranberry Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine sugar, butter, eggs, milk, flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar in a bowl and mix until well combined.

  2. Fold in the cranberries.

Steam the pudding

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam for 2½ hours.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, beat ½ cup butter until creamy.

  2. Gradually add 1 cup powdered sugar while beating.

  3. Add 1 tablespoon of lemon or vanilla extract.

  4. Gradually mix in ½ cup cream or milk until smooth.

  5. Place the bowl in hot water and stir until creamy and foamy.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add moisture and structure to the set pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid to release gas that makes the pudding rise.
Cream of tartar
Supplies the acid that activates the baking soda for rising and adds tang.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and a rich flavor in the pudding and sauce.
Cranberries
Add tartness and pockets of moisture that contrast with the sweet batter.

The step that matters

Steam the pudding right after mixing the batter. Baking soda and cream of tartar start producing gas as soon as they meet liquid. Filling the mold and getting it into steam promptly keeps that gas trapped in the batter so the pudding rises well instead of going flat.

“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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