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Griddle-cakes, Egg-batter

A griddle cake made from a batter of flour, eggs, sour milk, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Griddle-cakes, Egg-batter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat the griddle.

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour and salt.

  3. In another bowl, beat the egg yolks, then the whites, and finally combine them.

Make the batter

  1. Add the sour milk to the flour mixture and stir to form a batter.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in a small amount of hot water and quickly mix it into the batter.

Cook

  1. Pour the batter onto the heated griddle and cook until golden brown on both sides.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Whipped yolks and whites add structure and lightness to the batter.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help the cakes rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acid to produce gas that leavens the cakes.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the cakes together.

The step that matters

Mixing in the baking soda. Baking soda reacts with the acid in sour milk right away, releasing gas that lifts the batter. Mixing it in quickly and getting the batter onto the griddle keeps that gas from escaping before the cakes set.

“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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