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Dessert

Graham Gems

A muffin made with graham flour, all-purpose flour, baking powder, sugar, egg, butter, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Graham Gems

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg and mix in the sugar and butter until well combined.

  2. Add the milk and stir until smooth.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the baking powder, all-purpose flour, and graham flour.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until just combined.

Bake

  1. Spoon the batter into a greased muffin tin, filling each cup about two-thirds full.

  2. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown and a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the muffins set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, lifting the muffins as they bake.
Graham flour
Gives the muffins their coarse, nutty texture and brown color.
All-purpose flour
Provides gluten for structure, keeping the lighter muffin crumb from collapsing.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the muffins and helps them brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Stirring the dry ingredients into the wet mixture. Overmixing once the flour is added develops gluten, which makes muffins tough and tunnelled. Stir only until the streaks of flour disappear, so the batter stays tender.

“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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