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Dessert

Graham Pudding

A steamed pudding made with graham flour, molasses, raisins, currants, and cinnamon, served with vanilla sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Dissolve the baking soda in the sweet milk.

  2. In a bowl, combine graham flour, molasses, raisins (or mixed raisins and figs), currants, cinnamon, and the dissolved baking soda.

  3. Add the egg and mix well.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a steaming dish.

  2. Steam for three hours.

  3. Serve with a sauce flavored with vanilla.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Graham flour
Provides the bulk and structure of the pudding, with a coarse, hearty texture.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deep, dark flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to lighten the batter and help it rise.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps give the steamed pudding its set structure.
Raisins
Add sweetness, chewy texture and moisture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Steam for three hours. Steaming gently and steadily cooks the batter through without drying it. If the water boils dry or the steam drops, the pudding may turn out dense or underdone in the center.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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