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Dessert

Steamed Graham Pudding

A steamed pudding made with eggs, sweet milk, molasses, graham flour, raisins, and served with a lemon 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 ↓

Steamed Graham Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, mix eggs, salt, sweet milk, molasses, graham flour, raisins, and baking soda.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  3. Steam for 2 hours.

Make the lemon sauce

  1. For the lemon sauce, cream together sugar and butter.

  2. Stir in the beaten egg, lemon rind, and lemon juice.

  3. Add boiling water gradually until very hot but not boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve the pudding with the lemon 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. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the pudding sets during steaming.
Graham flour
Forms the body of the pudding, giving it a coarse, hearty texture.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to lighten the batter and help it rise.
Butter
Creams with the sugar to add richness and a smooth texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Add boiling water gradually to the lemon sauce. Adding the water slowly and stirring keeps the creamed butter and egg from curdling, giving a smooth sauce that is very hot but not boiling.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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