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Dessert

Steamed Berry Pudding

A steamed pudding made from a soft dough of flour, shortening, and berries, sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Steamed Berry Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Cut in the shortening until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

  3. Add milk or water gradually to form a soft dough.

Assemble and steam

  1. Roll out the dough and spread it with berries.

  2. Sprinkle sugar over the berries, then roll the dough up tightly.

  3. Place the rolled dough in a pan and steam for 2 to 3 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with a sauce of your choice.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 main structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the dough rises and turns light.
Shortening
Coats flour particles to create a tender, flaky texture in the dough.
Berries
Add moisture and fruity flavor that soaks into the rolled dough as it steams.
Sugar
Sweetens the berries and helps balance their tartness.

The step that matters

Cut in the shortening until coarse crumbs form. Shortening coated in flour keeps small pockets separate, so the dough stays tender rather than tough. Overworking it develops gluten and makes the pudding dense.

“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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