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Graham Porridge

A simple porridge made by boiling water, salt, and graham flour, served hot with cream and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 Porridge

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the porridge

  1. Bring 3 cups of water to a boil in a kettle.

  2. Add ½ teaspoon of coarse sea salt.

  3. Gradually stir in nearly ⅓ pint of graham flour, allowing it to boil thoroughly after each addition.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with cream and sugar.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Graham flour
Its starch thickens the water as it boils, giving the porridge its body and texture.

The step that matters

Adding the graham flour gradually. Flour dropped in all at once forms lumps, because the outer layer of each clump gels and blocks water from reaching the dry flour inside. Adding it slowly and letting the mixture boil again after each addition lets the starch disperse and thicken evenly.

“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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