Skip to main content
Dessert

Steamed Graham Pudding

A steamed pudding made with graham flour, molasses, raisins, and sour milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Steamed Graham Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, mix together the graham flour, egg, molasses, sugar, sour milk, raisins, and baking soda.

  2. Pour the mixture into a pudding mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 3 hours.

  2. Serve with a rich 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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk 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

Graham flour
Provides the main body and a coarse, hearty texture to the pudding.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps give the pudding its set structure as it cooks.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and a deep, robust flavour.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda, helping the pudding rise and stay tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas, lightening the batter as it steams.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness and moisture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Mix the batter fully before moulding. Baking soda needs the acid in the sour milk to react, so the batter should be evenly combined before it goes into the mold. Uneven mixing leaves pockets of unreacted soda or dense, uneven rise.

“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.

More graham pudding recipes

Steamed 22Apple 3 See all 149 →

You might also like

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