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Dessert

Steamed Graham Pudding

A steamed pudding made with graham flour, molasses, sweet milk, raisins, and served with a butter-sugar sauce.

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 ↓

Steamed Graham Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, mix Graham flour, molasses, sweet milk, baking soda, salt, allspice, and chopped raisins.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  3. Steam for 1.5 hours.

Make the sauce

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

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of milk and bring to a boil, stirring quickly.

  3. Remove from heat when it forms a perfect foam.

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. Allspice + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 coarse, wholesome body that gives the pudding its structure.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweetness to the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to produce gas, helping the pudding rise.
Butter
Creams with sugar to add richness and a tender texture to the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps it cream smoothly with the butter.

The step that matters

Remove the sauce from heat at the right moment. Boiling the milk and butter mixture too long can cause it to scorch or separate, while stirring keeps the milk proteins from sticking and burning on the pan base.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Allspicethe original

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