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Dessert

Graham Pudding

A steamed pudding made with butter, molasses, sweet milk, graham flour, baking soda, egg, raisins, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Graham Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream the butter and molasses together.

  2. Add the sweet milk, graham flour, baking soda, egg, raisins, cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg, then mix well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pudding mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 2½ hours.

  2. Serve with sauce No. 1.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding tender and moist.
Molasses
Provides sweetness, dark colour and a moist, slightly sticky crumb.
Graham flour
Forms the main structure of the pudding batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses' acidity to lighten the batter and help it rise.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets.
Seeded raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steam for 2½ hours. Steaming must stay gentle and continuous so the pudding cooks through evenly without drying out. Letting the water boil dry or drop too low can leave the centre underset or the outside dry.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

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