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Dessert

Runaway Cake

A griddle cake made with egg, sugar, butter, milk, cream of tartar, baking soda, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Runaway Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg and sugar together.

  2. Melt the butter.

  3. Mix the melted butter with the milk.

  4. Add the milk mixture to the egg mixture.

  5. Stir in the cream of tartar and baking soda.

  6. Gradually add flour until the batter is thicker than pancake batter.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook on a griddle until golden brown.

  2. Serve hot with butter.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Egg
Binds the batter and adds richness and structure to the cake.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda to produce gas for rising.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to release carbon dioxide, helping the cake rise.
Flour
Thickens the batter and gives the cake its body and structure.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid that hydrates the flour and helps form the batter.
Butter
Adds fat for richness, tenderness and flavour.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream of tartar and baking soda. These two react to release gas, so they should be added to a batter that is ready to cook. Cooking on a griddle soon after mixing keeps the bubbles that give lift, while waiting too long lets the reaction fade.

“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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