Name: Graham Pudding
Ingredients: 1 cup molasses; 1 cup tepid water; 2 cups graham flour; 1 cup chopped raisins; 1 teaspoon baking soda

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

In a bowl, combine molasses and tepid water.
Stir in graham flour, chopped raisins, and baking soda until well mixed.
Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Steam and serve

Steam for 3 hours.
Serve with golden 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.

Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,577 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,429 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

Molasses: Adds sweetness, dark color, and a rich, moist body to the pudding.
Graham flour: Forms the structure of the pudding batter and gives it a hearty, whole-grain texture.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas, helping the pudding rise and become lighter.
Raisins: Add pockets of chewy sweetness and moisture throughout the pudding.

“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.