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Dessert

Good Graham Gems

A small cake made with graham flour, sour milk, egg, and lard, baked in a hot oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Good Graham Gems

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the well-beaten egg and sour milk.

  2. Add the brown sugar, salt, and baking soda, mixing well.

  3. Stir in enough graham flour to create a stiff batter that will drop from a spoon.

  4. Melt the lard and mix it into the batter.

Bake

  1. Preheat gem pans until very hot, then grease them.

  2. Fill the pans with the batter and bake for 15 minutes in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C).

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 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

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acid to release carbon dioxide, helping the gems rise.
Graham flour
Forms the structure of the batter, with its bran giving a coarse, hearty texture.
Lard
Adds fat, which tenderizes the crumb and helps the gems brown and release from the pans.

The step that matters

Preheat the gem pans until very hot before filling. Batter poured into a hot, greased pan begins setting and browning immediately, which helps the gems rise quickly and release cleanly. Cold pans let the batter spread and stick.

“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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