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Dessert

Graham Pudding

A steamed pudding made with graham flour, molasses, milk, raisins, currants, baking soda, vanilla, and mixed spices.

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

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine graham flour, molasses, milk, chopped raisins, currants, baking soda, vanilla extract, and mixed spices, and mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Steam

  1. Steam the pudding for 2½ 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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  4. Raisin + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together782 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 the coarse, hearty structure of the pudding.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark colour and a deep, sweet flavour.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and helps form a moist, tender batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to lighten the batter and help it rise.
Chopped raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steam the pudding for 2½ hours. Steaming gently and steadily cooks the batter through without drying it out. If the water boils dry or the steam drops too low, the pudding can turn out dense or undercooked in the centre.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Blueberryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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