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Graham Hasty Pudding

A hot pudding made from Graham flour, water, milk, and salt, served with sugar, milk, cream, nutmeg, or powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Graham Hasty Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, mix Graham flour with cold water until smooth.

  2. In a pot, bring boiling water to a slight boil and add the wet flour mixture and salt.

Cook

  1. Boil for 10 minutes, stirring almost constantly.

  2. Add the milk and bring back to a boil, then cook for another 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with sugar and milk for breakfast, or with cream, nutmeg, and powdered sugar for dessert.

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 + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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
Forms the thick, porridge-like body of the pudding as its starch gelatinizes in hot water.
Milk
Adds richness and softens the texture while the mixture cooks a second time.

The step that matters

Stirring while the mixture boils. Flour starch can settle and scorch on the bottom of the pot during the 10-minute boil. Stirring almost constantly keeps heat even and the texture smooth rather than lumpy or burnt.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, milk, sugar, cream):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, sugar, cream. 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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