Skip to main content
Dessert

Amherst Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, milk, molasses, raisins, salt, spice, and baking soda, served with a butter-sugar-egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Amherst Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, combine flour, suet, milk, molasses, raisins, salt, spice, and baking soda, then mix well.

  2. Pour the mixture into a bag.

  3. Boil the bag in water for three hours.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, melt the butter and mix it with sugar and the egg until smooth.

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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the pudding as it cooks.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep, slightly bitter sweetness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses' acidity to lighten the pudding's texture.
Egg
Helps bind and smooth the sauce.

The step that matters

Sealing the bag for boiling. If the bag is not sealed tightly, water can seep in and dilute the pudding, and the batter may swell and burst the bag. A snug, well-closed bag keeps the pudding dense and moist during the long boil.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, milk, molasses, sugar, sauce, butter, egg):

  1. Raisinthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Peachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, molasses, sugar, sauce, butter, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

You might also like

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesMolasses Sponge CakeMolasses Sponge Cake9 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes