Name: Nantucket Berry-pudding
Ingredients: 1 pint grated cold boiled potatoes; 1 pint flour; ¼ pound butter; 1 teaspoon salt; Berries of your choice (blackberries, raspberries, cherries, or stewed dry berries); Milk or water (as needed)

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 ↓

Nantucket Berry-pudding

Ingredients

1 pint grated cold boiled potatoes
1 pint flour
¼ pound butter
1 teaspoon salt
Berries of your choice (blackberries, raspberries, cherries, or stewed dry berries)
Milk or water (as needed)

Directions

Make the dough

In a bowl, combine grated potatoes, flour, butter, and salt.
Add milk or water until the mixture reaches the consistency of soft biscuit dough.

Fill and steam

Roll out the dough and spread it with your chosen berries.
Roll it up and secure it in a cloth.
Steam for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Serve

Serve with any sweet pudding 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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,456 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Grated potatoes: Add starch and moisture, giving the dough a soft, tender body.
Flour: Provides structure so the dough holds together when rolled and steamed.
Butter: Adds fat that enriches the dough and keeps it tender.
Berries: Release juice and sweetness into the rolled dough as it steams.

The step that matters

Add milk or water gradually. Too much liquid makes the dough sticky and hard to roll, while too little leaves it crumbly. Aim for the texture of soft biscuit dough so the roll holds its shape during steaming.

Swap the potato

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

Potatothe original
Arrowrootfits about as well
Leekfits less well
Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, milk. 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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Nantucket Berry-pudding