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Dessert

Steamed Graham Pudding

A steamed pudding made with sour milk, molasses, raisins, and graham flour, served warm with sweetened cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 batter

  1. In a bowl, combine sour milk, molasses, baking soda, salt, and raisins.

  2. Add graham flour gradually until the mixture forms a stiff batter.

Steam and serve

  1. Grease a deep dish with butter and pour the batter into it.

  2. Steam the pudding for 3 hours.

  3. Serve warm with sweetened cream.

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. Raisin + flourtop 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  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

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk to release carbon dioxide, helping the pudding rise.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the pudding.
Graham flour
Forms the structure of the stiff batter as its starches and proteins set during steaming.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Add graham flour gradually until the mixture forms a stiff batter. Adding flour in small amounts lets you judge when the batter is stiff enough. Too much flour makes the pudding dense and heavy, while too little leaves it wet and unable to hold its shape during steaming.

Swap the raisin

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, molasses, flour, butter, 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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