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Dessert

Amherst Pudding

A steamed pudding made with sour milk, flour, suet, molasses, salt, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Amherst Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine sour milk, flour, chopped suet, molasses, salt, and baking soda. Mix until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Cook

  1. Boil for 4 hours or steam until cooked through.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to help the pudding rise and stay tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to release gas that lightens the batter.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the pudding.
Chopped suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cooking the pudding through. Boiling or steaming gently for the full time lets heat reach the center of the dense batter. Stopping early can leave the middle raw or gummy, so the pudding should be cooked until fully set.

“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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