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Dessert

Graham Pudding

A steamed pudding made with graham meal, sweet milk, molasses, butter, raisins, 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 butter 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 ↓

Graham Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine graham meal, sweet milk, molasses, butter, raisins, and baking soda. Mix until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 3 hours.

  2. Serve warm.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  4. Butter + raisintop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,630 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Graham meal
Provides the coarse wholegrain body and bulk that give the pudding its structure.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and a rich, treacly flavour.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, moist crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the graham meal so the batter becomes spoonable and moist.

The step that matters

Steam for 3 hours. Steaming gently and steadily cooks the batter through without drying it. Letting the water boil dry or lifting the lid often can cause uneven cooking and a dry, dense pudding.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, molasses, butter. 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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