Skip to main content
Dessert

Good Berry Pudding

A steamed pudding made with eggs, sugar, sour milk, butter, baking soda, flour, berries, and a pinch of salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Good Berry Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the sugar and sour milk.

  2. Melt the butter and add it to the mixture along with the baking soda, salt, and enough flour to create a stiff batter.

  3. Gently fold in the berries.

Steam

  1. Pour the batter into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam for 2 hours.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during steaming.
Flour
Forms the stiff batter's structure so the pudding holds its shape.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds moisture and tenderness.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Berries
Add moisture, flavour and colour throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Folding in the berries. Stirring vigorously or overmixing develops gluten and can crush the berries and bleed their juice. Folding gently keeps the batter light and the berries whole.

“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.

More berry pudding recipes

Cold 9Steamed 8 See all 44 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes