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Dessert

Graham Pudding

A steamed pudding made with Graham flour, molasses, butter, starch, milk, egg, raisins, currants, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix together the Graham flour, molasses, butter, starch, milk, egg, baking soda, raisins, currants, salt, and spices until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the pudding for 2 ½ to 3 hours.

  2. Serve warm with a liquid 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  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 main structure and a hearty, nutty body to the pudding.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deep, dark flavour.
Starch
Thickens the batter and gives the pudding a tender, soft texture.
Egg
Binds the ingredients together and helps set the pudding's structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to lighten the batter and help it rise.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a moist, tender crumb.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding. Steam must be kept steady and the water kept topped up over the long cooking time. Gentle, sustained heat cooks the batter evenly through, while a boil that is too hard or water that runs dry can leave the pudding unevenly cooked or dense.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

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

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