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Wheat Griddle Cakes

A simple batter of wheat flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, eggs, and milk cooked on a hot griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Flour and milk 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 ↓

Wheat Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Sift together the flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and milk, and mix to form a smooth batter.

Cook and serve

  1. Bake on a hot griddle until golden brown.

  2. Serve with maple syrup.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure that holds the cakes together as they set.
Large eggs
Add structure and richness, and help bind the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cakes rise and turn light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture and tenderness to the cakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during cooking.

The step that matters

Cooking on a hot griddle. Baking powder starts producing gas as soon as it meets liquid, so the batter should be cooked promptly after mixing. A hot griddle sets the outside quickly while the inside rises, and it browns the surface through the Maillard reaction.

“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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