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Flannel Cakes

Flannel Cakes are batter cakes made with eggs, sour milk, flour, baking soda, and butter, cooked on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Flannel Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs well.

  2. Add sour milk, salt, sugar, and melted butter to the eggs.

  3. Mix in enough flour to create a batter.

Cook

  1. In the morning, dissolve the baking soda in hot water and add it to the batter.

  2. Cook on a griddle 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Bind the batter and add richness and structure to the cakes.
Sour milk
Provides liquid and acidity that reacts with the baking soda.
Flour
Forms the structure of the batter as the cakes set on the griddle.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to produce gas, helping the cakes rise.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavor.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in hot water before adding it to the batter. Baking soda needs to be fully dissolved so it spreads evenly through the batter. Its rise comes from reacting with the acid in the sour milk, so uneven distribution leaves pockets of gas and uneven cakes.

“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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