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Dessert

Berry Pudding

Berry pudding is a baked dessert made with butter, sugar, milk, flour, baking powder, egg whites, and berries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Berry Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Add the milk and mix well.

  3. Sift the baking powder into the flour, then gradually add it to the mixture.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a buttered pudding dish.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

  3. Serve with a hot 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.

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 + 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. Flour + eggtop 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it bakes.
Egg whites
Beaten whites trap air and set during baking, giving the pudding a light texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, causing the batter to rise.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown in the oven.
Milk
Moistens the batter and helps form its structure as it bakes.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Folding keeps the air bubbles in the beaten egg whites intact. Stirring vigorously would deflate them, reducing the lift the pudding gets in the oven.

“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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