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Dessert

Graham Pudding

A sweet baked pudding made with molasses, sweet milk, graham flour, raisins, and a sauce of butter, flour, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the pudding

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the egg, molasses, sweet milk, graham flour, baking soda, chopped raisins, and a little salt until well combined.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish and bake for about 30-40 minutes or until set.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, combine 1 tablespoon flour, butter, 1 cup water, and 1 cup sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over medium heat until thickened, then add vinegar to taste.

  3. Alternatively, mix 1 cup sugar, 3 tablespoons hot water, 1 tablespoon flour, and ½ cup beaten butter until creamy, then cook together and flavor as desired.

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. Molasses + sugartop 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. 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

Egg
Binds the batter and helps give the pudding its set structure as it bakes.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and moisture, and a deep, rich flavor.
Graham flour
Forms the body of the pudding, giving it a coarser, more textured crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to produce gas that lifts the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Pulling the pudding too early leaves the centre wet and collapsed, because the egg and flour proteins need heat to firm up fully.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Raisinthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Peachfits less well

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