Skip to main content
Dessert

Gems Without Sour Milk

A thin batter cake made with Graham flour, sweet milk, and salt, baked until light brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Gems Without Sour Milk

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Mix Graham flour with enough sweet milk to make a thin batter.

  2. Add salt and beat well.

  3. Preheat gem pans until hot.

  4. Pour the batter into the hot pans.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until they are a light even brown.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 flour
Forms the body of the batter, giving the gems their structure and coarse, nutty texture.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour into a thin batter and provides moisture for the baked gems.

The step that matters

Preheating the gem pans until hot. Pouring batter into hot pans starts the crust setting and browning immediately, helping the gems rise and release cleanly. Cold pans let the batter spread and stick.

“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

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes