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Dessert

Graham Cracker Cake

A layered cake made with Graham crackers, sugar, lard, eggs, milk, flour, baking powder, walnuts, cocoa, cream, butter, confectionery sugar, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Graham Cracker Cake

Why it works: Milk and butter 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.

Make the cake

  1. Cream together the sugar and lard in a bowl.

  2. Add the eggs and mix well.

  3. Incorporate the crushed Graham crackers, milk, flour, baking powder, and walnuts into the mixture.

  4. Divide the batter into two layers and bake at 350°F (175°C) until done.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, mix cocoa, cream, butter, confectionery sugar, and vanilla in a bowl.

  2. If the filling is too thin, add more confectionery sugar.

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

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Milk + cocoatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Lard
Creams with sugar to give the cake a tender, short crumb and moist texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Graham crackers
Add a toasty, slightly nutty flavour and bulk to the batter.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the layers together.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven so the layers rise and become lighter.
Confectionery sugar
Sweetens the filling and thickens it as it is added.

The step that matters

Baking the two layers until done. Baking time is not stated in the record, so the cook must judge doneness. Underbaked layers stay gummy and may collapse, while overbaking dries the crumb and makes the layers crumbly.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Macadamia nutfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, milk, flour, walnut, cream, butter. 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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