Skip to main content
Dessert

Graham Muffins

A muffin made with Graham flour, wheat flour, sour milk, sour cream, baking soda, molasses, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Graham Muffins

Why it works: Wheat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Graham Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat your muffin pans in the oven.

  2. In a bowl, combine the Graham flour and wheat flour.

Make the batter

  1. In a separate cup, measure ¾ cup of sour milk and add sour cream until the cup is full. Mix the sour milk and cream with the dry ingredients.

  2. Add baking soda, molasses, and salt to the mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into the hot muffin pans and bake until golden.

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. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Milk + creamtop 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

Graham flour
Provides the main structure and the coarse, nutty texture of the muffins.
Wheat flour
Adds gluten-forming protein to give the muffins more structure and lift.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce carbon dioxide, helping the muffins rise.
Sour cream
Adds fat and moisture, making the muffins tender and rich.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk and cream to leaven the batter.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a deep color and flavor that aids browning.

The step that matters

Pour the batter into the hot pans promptly. Baking soda starts reacting as soon as it meets the acidic sour milk, so the batter should go into the hot pans right away. Waiting lets gas escape before the oven sets the structure, which can leave flat, dense muffins.

“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

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesWheat MuffinsWheat Muffins48 recipesWhole Wheat MuffinsWhole Wheat Muffins12 recipes