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Dessert

Graham Pudding

A steamed pudding made with graham flour, white flour, molasses, butter, sour milk, raisins, baking soda, egg, salt, and optional spice.

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 bowl, combine Graham flour, white flour, molasses, butter, sour milk, raisins, baking soda, egg, salt, and spice if desired. Mix until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into cups, filling them not quite half full.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the cups for 1.5 hours.

  2. Serve with soft 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 a coarse, hearty structure and a nutty, wholesome flavor.
White flour
Adds gluten for structure, giving the pudding a lighter, more cohesive crumb.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a deep, dark flavor.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to leaven the batter.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps set the pudding's structure as it steams.

The step that matters

Filling the cups. Batter needs room to rise as the baking soda reacts with the acidic sour milk and steam expands the pudding. Filling the cups not quite half full leaves space for this rise, so the pudding does not overflow or turn dense.

“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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