Skip to main content
Dessert

Graham Cracker Cake

A baked cake made with graham crackers, eggs, sugar, nuts, and a butterscotch filling served with whipped cream.

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

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 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 batter

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

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks and add 2 cups of sugar.

  4. Fold in the rolled graham crackers, baking powder, salt, and chopped nuts.

  5. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake and make the filling

  1. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake until golden.

  2. For the butterscotch filling, combine butter, ½ cup sugar, syrup, vinegar, boiling water, and corn syrup in a saucepan.

  3. Stir until the sugar dissolves, then boil until it forms a soft ball in cold water.

Serve

  1. Serve the cake broken into sherbet cups, topped with the filling and a spoonful of whipped cream.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + creamtop 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. Syrup + creamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Nuts + corntop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together104 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whites trap air for lift, and yolks enrich the batter with structure and moisture.
Graham crackers
Provide the crumbly base and a toasty, sweet flavour in the cake.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to help the cake rise.
Chopped nuts
Add texture and a rich, toasted flavour to the crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and flavour in the butterscotch filling.

The step that matters

Boil the butterscotch to a soft ball. Sugar syrup must reach the right temperature to set into a soft, spoonable filling. Too little boiling leaves it runny, while overboiling makes it hard and grainy.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, butter, syrup, vinegar, corn, cream):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Peanutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, syrup, vinegar, corn, cream. 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.

You might also like

Corn CakeCorn Cake90 recipesCorn Starch CakeCorn Starch Cake89 recipesCorn CakesCorn Cakes22 recipesGreen Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding14 recipes