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Dessert

Graham-flour Batter Cakes

A simple cake made with graham flour, milk, eggs, baking powder, salt, and optional baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour 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 ↓

Graham-flour Batter Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the graham flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. In another bowl, whisk together the milk and eggs.

  3. Gradually add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, mixing until smooth.

Cook the cakes

  1. Heat a griddle or frying pan over medium heat and lightly grease it.

  2. Pour batter onto the griddle to form cakes and cook until bubbles form on the surface.

  3. Flip and cook until golden brown on both sides.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Milk and flour 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during cooking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cakes rise and turn lighter.
Graham flour
Forms the base of the cakes, giving them their structure and coarse, nutty texture.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and provides moisture and tenderness in the batter.

The step that matters

Adding the wet ingredients to the dry. Adding the liquid gradually and mixing only until smooth keeps lumps out without overworking the batter, which would make the cakes tough. Baking powder starts reacting once wet, so the batter should go onto the griddle without long waiting.

“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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