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Dessert

Graham Pudding

A steamed pudding made with graham flour, raisins, currants, citron, egg, butter, sugar, molasses, baking soda, and sour cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 batter

  1. Combine graham flour, raisins, currants, citron, egg, butter, sugar, molasses, baking soda, and sour cream in a large bowl.

  2. Stir until you have a stiff batter.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased steaming dish.

  2. Steam for 3 hours.

  3. Serve with whipped cream or sugar 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Graham flour
Forms the main body of the pudding and gives it a hearty, slightly nutty structure.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps it set firmly during steaming.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream and molasses to lighten the batter as it steams.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity that tenderise the crumb and activate the baking soda.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and a deep, rich flavour.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a moist, tender texture.

The step that matters

Stir until you have a stiff batter. Stirring only until the ingredients are combined keeps the pudding tender; overworking the flour develops gluten and makes the texture tough and dense.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, raisin, egg, butter, sugar, molasses, 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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