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Dessert

Steamed Graham Pudding

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

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 ↓

Steamed Graham Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine graham flour, milk, molasses, sugar, melted butter, baking soda, spices, and raisins in a large bowl, then mix until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 3 hours.

  2. Serve with any kind of sauce.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Provides the bulk and coarse, nutty structure of the pudding.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and deep sweetness with a robust flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and richer flavor.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and helps form a moist, cohesive batter.

The step that matters

Steam for 3 hours. Steaming gently and steadily cooks the batter through without drying it. The pot must keep boiling water at a steady level, since a lapse lets the pudding turn heavy and undercooked in the center.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, milk, molasses, sugar, butter):

  1. Raisinthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Peachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, molasses, sugar, butter. 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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