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Dessert

Alice's Graham Batter-cakes

A quick batter cake made with graham flour, eggs, milk, lard, baking powder, and salt, cooked on a hot griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Alice's Graham Batter-cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs thoroughly.

  2. Add the milk and salt to the eggs.

  3. Mix the baking powder into the flour and add it to the mixture.

  4. Beat in the melted lard, then mix well until smooth.

Cook

  1. Preheat a greased griddle until very hot, then pour the batter onto it to cook.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set when cooked.
Graham flour
Forms the bulk of the batter and gives the cakes their structure and coarse texture.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that hydrates the flour and makes the batter pourable.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cakes rise and become light.
Melted lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the cakes and helps keep them from drying out.

The step that matters

Preheat the griddle until very hot before pouring the batter. A hot, greased surface sets the outside of each cake quickly, so it releases cleanly and does not spread or stick. A cool griddle lets the batter soak in and cook unevenly.

“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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