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Dessert

Graham Pudding

A steamed pudding made with Graham flour, raisins, molasses, and butter.

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

Prepare the batter

  1. Mix the Graham flour, brown sugar, and salt in a bowl. Add the raisins.

  2. In another bowl, combine the well-beaten egg and milk. Add the molasses and melted butter.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in boiling water. Add it to the mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour into a well-greased mold.

  2. Steam the pudding as you would a fruit pudding.

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. Sugar + molassestop 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. Raisin + molassestop 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
Forms the bulk of the batter and gives the pudding its structure and hearty texture.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets during steaming.
Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture, and a deep, sweet, caramel-like flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses and lifts the batter so the pudding becomes light rather than dense.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, moist crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and deepens the molasses flavor.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in boiling water and add it to the mixture. Baking soda needs to be fully dissolved so it reacts evenly through the batter. Uneven dissolving leaves pockets of bitter soda and dense or patchy rising.

Swap the raisin

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