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Dessert

Amherst Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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. In a large bowl, combine flour, suet, milk, molasses, raisins, salt, spice, and baking soda. Mix well.

  2. Pour the mixture into a bag.

  3. Boil the bag in water for 3 hours.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Cream together sugar and butter. 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 of the pudding as it cooks.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and a deep flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to help the pudding rise and lighten.
Egg
Helps bind and smooth the sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the bag in water. The bag must be sealed well and kept fully submerged while it boils, so water does not enter and the pudding cooks evenly with steady, gentle heat over the full three hours.

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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