Skip to main content
Dessert

Steamed Graham Pudding

A steamed pudding made with graham flour, raisins, molasses, and a sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 pudding

  1. In a bowl, combine the raisins, molasses, baking soda, milk, salt, graham flour, and spices.

  2. Mix well and pour the batter into individual cups.

  3. Steam the cups for 30 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, combine sugar, eggs, boiling water, and flour in a saucepan.

  2. Cook while stirring until thickened. Add vanilla.

  3. Fold in beaten egg whites.

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. Raisin + flourtop 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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 body and structure of the pudding batter.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a dark color to the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity of molasses to lighten the batter as it steams.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the batter.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the pudding.
Eggs
Thicken the sauce as the proteins set while it cooks.

The step that matters

Cooking the sauce until thickened. Egg in the sauce must be heated gently while stirring. Too much heat or too little stirring can scramble the eggs or leave lumps, while steady stirring lets the starch and egg thicken it smoothly.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Datesfits less well
  4. Applefits less well

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

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesMolasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesMolasses Sponge CakeMolasses Sponge Cake9 recipes