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Dessert

Steamed Graham Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, graham flour, cinnamon, baking soda, optional nuts, butter, powdered sugar, egg yolk, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Prepare the pudding

  1. In a bowl, combine raisins, graham flour, cinnamon, and baking soda.

  2. Add chopped almonds or walnuts if desired.

  3. Steam the mixture for three hours.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Gradually add powdered sugar and mix well.

  3. Incorporate the egg yolk and flavoring into the mixture.

  4. Place the sauce in a pan of hot water on the stove to warm.

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. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 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

Graham flour
Forms the bulk of the pudding, giving it a hearty, structured crumb as it steams.
Baking soda
Reacts to lighten the batter so the steamed pudding rises and turns tender.
Butter
Creaming with sugar adds richness and a smooth, spreadable texture to the sauce.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the sauce and dissolves smoothly into the creamed butter.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the sauce into a smooth, cohesive mixture.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding for three hours. Steam must stay steady and the pan must keep enough water, or the pudding dries out or turns dense. Gentle, continuous steaming cooks the batter through evenly without scorching the base.

“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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