Skip to main content
Dessert

Steamed Graham Pudding

A steamed pudding made with molasses, milk, eggs, graham flour, currants, raisins, baking soda, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix together the molasses, milk, and eggs.

  2. Stir in the graham flour, currants, raisins, baking soda, and salt until well combined.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold.

Steam

  1. Steam the pudding for three hours.

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. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

Milk and flour 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

Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acid to produce gas that lifts and lightens the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the pudding sets during steaming.
Graham flour
Forms the bulk of the pudding and gives it a hearty, coarse texture.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture, and its acidity activates the baking soda.

The step that matters

Stir in the baking soda with the flour and then fill the mold. Baking soda starts producing gas as soon as it meets the acidic molasses, so the batter should be mixed fully and moved into the mold without delay to trap that gas and get an even rise.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

You might also like

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipes