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Dessert

Amherst Pudding

A boiled pudding made with flour, suet, milk, molasses, raisins, and a sweet sauce of sugar, butter, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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. Combine flour, suet, milk, molasses, raisins, salt, spice, and baking soda in a large bowl, then mix well.

  2. Pour the mixture into a cloth bag.

  3. Boil the bag in water for 3 hours.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Cream together sugar and butter for the sauce, then beat in the egg until smooth.

  2. Serve the pudding warm with the 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. 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
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Suet
Adds richness and a moist, tender texture to the pudding.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and a deep, rich flavor.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to help the pudding rise and lighten.
Egg
Binds the sauce and gives it a smooth, thickened body.

The step that matters

Boil the bag in water for 3 hours. The bag must stay submerged and the water must keep simmering so the pudding cooks evenly through. Low or uneven heat leaves the center dense and undercooked.

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.

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