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Dessert

Graham Fruit Pudding

A sweet pudding made with graham flour, molasses, raisins, and milk, cooked slowly in a double boiler.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Graham Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix together graham flour, milk, molasses, salt, and baking soda.

  2. Stir in chopped raisins and beaten egg.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook in a double boiler for 3 hours, or pour into a pudding pail, leaving room for it to rise.

  2. Cover tightly and boil in a covered kettle with water for 3 hours.

  3. Serve with hard sauce or cream and sugar.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Forms the bulk of the pudding's structure and gives it a hearty, coarse texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to produce gas, helping the pudding rise and lighten.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture, and its acidity activates the baking soda.
Egg
Binds the batter together and adds richness to help it set during steaming.
Raisins
Add pockets of concentrated sweetness and chewy fruit texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Leaving room for the pudding to rise. Baking soda reacting with molasses produces gas that expands the batter as it steams. Filling the pail too full can cause the pudding to overflow or become dense where it cannot expand.

“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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