Mary Hooker’s 1846 Recipe for ‘Berry Pudding’

“Take a quart of whortleberries, blackberries, or blueberries, and be careful to drain them perfectly after washing;* put them into such a batter as the preceding recipe directs, except that there should be twelve or fourteen spoonfuls of flour, on account of the additional moisture afforded by the berries.

Batter puddings may be made with fewer eggs by adding a little more flour and a little saleratus.”

* Whortleberries and blueberries should always be washed, but blackberries cannot be.

Mrs Cornelius (Mary Hooker), The Young Housekeeper’s Friend (1846)

We’ve had an excellent blueberry harvest this year – around 2.5Kg from our eight potted blueberry bushes, with a few more still to ripen – so I thought I’d have quick look for blueberry recipes in the historical cookery archives. Which turned out to be a more interesting experience than I was expecting – minor research rabbit hole alert! – mainly due to the proliferation of different names that blueberries, and their close relatives, have been given over the years.

All blueberries, and their cousins, are members of the genus Vaccinium, which contains over 493 accepted species, according to Plants of the World Online. What we think of as a blueberry today – the type that’s available in UK supermarkets year-round, thanks to them being grown seemingly everywhere from the UK to Eastern Europe to North Africa to North and South America – is the cultivated form of Vaccinium corymbosum, a.k.a. the highbush blueberry, a native of North America. I was therefore expecting to find the earliest blueberry recipes an American cookery books. And indeed, the recipe above is from a collection by “Mrs Cornelius” that was published in Boston, Massachusetts.

Note that Mrs C. mentions another two types of berries in her recipe: blackberries, which surely need no introduction or explanation, and whortleberries, which might. The whortleberry is another member of the Vaccinium genus, Vaccinium myrtilus, and they’re also known as bilberries, whinberries or blaeberries. Not to be confused with Vaccinium uliginosum, a.k.a. the bog bilberry, or bog blueberry, another edible, wild-grown relative.

In the same volume as the berry pudding recipe there’s also one for ‘whortleberry or blackberry pies’ (p.71) and there’s a slightly earlier recipe for a whortleberry pie, in another American cookbook, Prudence Smith’s Modern American Cookery (1831). Interesting to note that it’s listed under ‘savoury pies’, in-between ‘pumpkin’ and ‘hare’, which makes sense if you consider the tart, acidic flavour of the raw berries, which would presumably have contrasted nicely in-between meatier courses.

Whortleberries and bilberries were common enough fruits in the British Isles long before anyone thought to introduce the highbush types from North America, so why couldn’t I find a whortleberry or bilberry pie or pudding recipe in any earlier, British cookbooks?

Perhaps they were normally considered to be a more medicinal fruit, as Thomas F. Branston’s The Druggist’s Hand-Book of Practical Receipts (1853) suggests, with its ‘decoction of whortleberry’ (p.59) which we’re told is “Diuretic, astringent. Used in diseases of the bladder.”

Or perhaps whorts, whortleberries, bilberries, were just too hard to find, and too small and fiddly to pick to be worth gathering for a pie, when alternatives such as blackberries or raspberries were easier to find, easier to gather, and filled a pie dish or pudding basin with a lot less effort?

Anyhow, back to the recipe. Simplicity itself, no? One ingredient might need identifying: Saleratus, or bicarbonate of potassium, which was fairly common back in the nineteenth century, less so today, and can be substituted with baking powder. Mrs Cornelius also mentioned the preceding recipe for ‘Boiled or Baked batter pudding’, which is as follows:

“To a quart of milk put six eggs, eight large spoonfuls of flour, and a teaspoonful of salt. To be boiled an hour and a half.”

It’s another variant on the ‘Nottingham Pudding‘ theme of batter-pudding-with-fruit that must have been incredibly common, as it was so quick and easy to prepare.

What do you reckon? Does a batter pudding, infused with blueberries, sound like your kind of sweet treat? Do you have a great recipe for using up a blueberry surplus? Do please let me know, via the comments.