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Dessert

Blueberry Pudding

A steamed blueberry pudding made from flour, butter, milk, and blueberries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Blueberry Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the bread flour and baking powder.

  2. Rub in the softened butter until well combined.

  3. Add enough sweet milk to form a thick dough.

  4. Gently stir in the blueberries.

Steam and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a steamer and steam for 1.5 hours.

  2. Serve with cream and maple sugar.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

Bread flour
Forms the starchy structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the pudding rise and turn light.
Butter
Coats flour particles, adding richness and a tender crumb.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour so it forms a dough and adds moisture.
Blueberries
Add juicy pockets of fruit flavour and colour throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Gently stir in the blueberries. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, making the pudding tough and dense. Crushing the berries releases their juice and turns the dough purple and wet, so fold them in gently until just distributed.

“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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