Skip to main content
Dessert

Geaham Pudding

A steamed pudding made with graham flour, molasses, sweet milk, raisins, and served with hard and soft sauces.

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

Geaham Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Combine graham flour, molasses, sweet milk, raisins, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased mold and steam for 2 hours.

Make the sauces

  1. Cream together butter and sugar.

  2. Add beaten egg white and vanilla.

  3. Grate nutmeg over the top of the hard sauce before serving.

  4. Use the same ingredients as hard sauce.

  5. Add a whole egg and boiling water until the desired consistency is reached.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Flour + buttertop 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).

Flour and butter 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

Graham flour
Provides the bulk and hearty, slightly nutty structure of the pudding.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and a dark color to the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to lighten the batter so the pudding rises.
Butter
Adds richness and body to the hard sauce.
Egg white
Whips light air into the hard sauce, giving it a fluffy texture.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding. The pudding must steam gently for the full time with the mold kept covered and water at a steady simmer. Steam sets the batter evenly; too little heat or water leaves it dense and undercooked in the center.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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

More graham pudding recipes

Steamed 22Apple 3 See all 149 →

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesMolasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesMolasses Sponge CakeMolasses Sponge Cake9 recipes