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Graham Mush

A thick porridge made from Graham meal simmered in salted water and served with milk, sugar, butter, or syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Graham Mush

Ingredients

Directions

Make the porridge

  1. Bring 4 cups of salted water to a boil.

  2. Slowly sift in 1 cup of Graham meal, stirring briskly until thick.

Serve

  1. Serve with milk or cream and sugar, or with butter and syrup.

  2. For improved flavor, transfer to a pan and steam for 3 to 4 hours.

  3. It can also be eaten cold or sliced and fried like cornmeal mush.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + syruptop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,143 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 meal
Forms the thick body of the porridge as it absorbs the boiling water and swells.

The step that matters

Sifting in the Graham meal slowly while stirring briskly. Adding meal slowly and stirring constantly spreads the particles so they hydrate evenly instead of forming lumps. Lumps are hard to smooth out once the starch has gelatinized in the hot water.

“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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