Skip to main content
Dessert

Graham Cake

A sweet cake made with graham flour, raisins, brown sugar, sour milk, butter, eggs, baking soda, cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Graham Cake

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Graham Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a rather moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, beat the brown sugar and melted butter together lightly.

  3. Add the beaten egg and mix well.

  4. Stir the baking soda into the sour milk until dissolved, then add it to the sugar and egg mixture.

  5. Sift the ground cloves and cinnamon with 1 cup of graham flour, then add this mixture and enough additional flour to create a moderately thick batter.

  6. Seed and chop the raisins, dust them with a little flour, and fold them into the batter.

  7. Beat the batter vigorously for 5 minutes.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan and bake for 45 minutes.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sour milk
Reacts with the baking soda to produce gas, helping the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to leaven the batter so it rises.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and contributes to a soft, tender crumb.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets in the oven.
Graham flour
Provides the main structure and thickens the batter.

The step that matters

Beat the batter vigorously for 5 minutes. Vigorous beating develops gluten in the flour, giving structure, but this step is easy to skip or rush. Baking soda is already reacting with the sour milk, so the batter should go into the pan promptly to keep the rise.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, raisin, egg, flour, cinnamon. 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

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes