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Dessert

Graham Pudding

A steamed pudding made with molasses, butter, sour milk, Graham flour, raisins, and spices, served with a sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Graham Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, mix molasses, butter, sour milk, Graham flour, egg, baking soda, raisins, and spices until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  3. Steam the pudding for 3 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, melt butter in a saucepan, then add sugar and cornstarch.

  2. Stir in boiling water and cook until thickened.

  3. Remove from heat and flavor with vanilla.

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. Butter + milktop 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. Butter + flourtop 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).

Butter and flour 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

Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture and a deep, sweet flavor to the batter.
Graham flour
Provides the structure of the pudding and a coarse, nutty texture.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps give the pudding its set structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Sour milk
Supplies moisture and acidity that activates the baking soda.
Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with boiling water.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce. Cornstarch must be cooked in the boiling liquid long enough to swell and thicken; undercooked starch leaves the sauce thin and cloudy-tasting.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Raisinthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Peachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, butter, milk, flour, egg, sauce, sugar. 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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