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Dessert

Buttermilk Cakes

A simple batter of buttermilk, egg, flour, baking soda, and salt, cooked on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Buttermilk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Buttermilk Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the egg and mix it with the buttermilk and salt.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in boiling water and stir it into the buttermilk mixture.

  3. Gradually add flour while stirring until the batter pours smoothly from the spoon.

  4. Beat the batter well and cook on a hot griddle.

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. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Buttermilk + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,986 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Buttermilk
Provides the acidity that reacts with baking soda and adds tang and moisture.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness to the cakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the buttermilk's acid to produce gas, helping the cakes rise and turn light.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cakes as it sets during cooking.

The step that matters

Adding the flour gradually. Flour must be stirred in slowly until the batter pours smoothly from the spoon. Too much flour at once makes the batter stiff and dense, and the cakes will cook up tough rather than tender.

“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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