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Dessert

Graham Cracker Cake

A sweet cake made with graham crackers, butter, sugar, eggs, milk, baking powder, and walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Graham Cracker Cake

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 Cracker Cake

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.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar in a mixing bowl.

  2. Add the eggs and milk, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the crushed graham crackers, baking powder, and walnut meats.

  4. Pour the batter into a long, shallow baking tin.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until golden brown.

  2. Once baked, sprinkle with powdered sugar before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Walnut + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,035 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Milk + walnuttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 they set during baking.
Graham crackers
Provide the crumb body and a toasty, sweet flavor to the cake.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, and helps the sugar cream into the batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender crumb when creamed with butter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to lift the cake as it bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it bakes evenly.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Baking long enough sets the eggs and crumb so the cake holds together, while stopping at golden brown avoids dryness from overbaking. Judge by color and doneness rather than time alone.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Almondfits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Cocoafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, milk, meat. 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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