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Dessert

Country Griddle-cake

A simple griddle cake made with flour, salt, sour milk, baking soda, and greased on a hot griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,386 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Country Griddle-cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour and salt together.

  2. Gradually pour the sour milk into the flour while stirring with a spoon until smooth.

  3. Beat the batter for a few minutes until it becomes light and bubbles form.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in a little hot water and mix it into the batter vigorously.

Cook on the griddle

  1. Grease a hot griddle with salt pork, lard, or butter.

  2. Drop three or four spoonfuls of batter onto the griddle, spaced apart.

  3. Cook until golden brown on one side, then flip and cook the other side.

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 + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + porktop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together as they cook.
Sour milk
Supplies liquid and acidity that gives the batter its tang and tender texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lightens the cakes.

The step that matters

Mixing in the baking soda. Baking soda must meet acid to release carbon dioxide for rising, so it should be dissolved and mixed in promptly and thoroughly. Batter left to stand loses lift before it reaches the griddle.

“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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