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Dessert

Graham Cakes

A quick baked cake made with graham flour, white flour, sugar, eggs, milk, and butter or lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Graham Cakes

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Graham Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a large bowl, combine graham flour, sugar, white flour, salt, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

  3. In another bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the milk and melted butter or lard.

Make and bake

  1. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix until combined.

  2. Spoon the batter into small tins.

  3. Bake until golden 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.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter set as it bakes.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda to produce rising gas.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to release carbon dioxide, lifting the cakes.
Graham flour
Forms the main structure of the cakes and adds a nutty, coarse texture.
Melted butter or lard
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour, and helps browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Combine the wet and dry ingredients. Mixing only until combined keeps the batter light. Overmixing develops gluten in the white flour, making the cakes tough, while the acid and baking soda start reacting as soon as they meet, so the batter should go into the tins promptly.

“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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