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Dessert

Graham Pudding

A steamed pudding made with graham flour, sweet milk, molasses, raisins, and a sugar‑egg white topping.

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 pudding

  1. Combine graham flour, sweet milk, molasses, chopped raisins, baking soda dissolved in a little water, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold and steam for 3 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. Boil sugar with a little water in a saucepan until it threads.

  2. Slowly pour the hot sugar into the beaten egg white and beat until light and fluffy.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 body of the pudding and gives it its hearty, nutty texture.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark colour and a rich, sweet flavour.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to lighten the batter as it steams.
Egg white
Beaten with hot sugar, it forms a light, fluffy foam.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and, boiled to a thread, sets into the fluffy topping structure.

The step that matters

Slowly pour the hot sugar into the beaten egg white. Pouring the syrup in a thin, steady stream while beating lets it cook the egg white gradually into a stable, glossy foam. Pouring too fast can deflate the foam or leave it runny.

“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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