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Griddle Cakes for Two

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour 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 ↓

Griddle Cakes for Two

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg in a bowl.

  2. Add salt, sour milk or buttermilk, baking soda, and baking powder.

  3. Sift in the flour and mix until combined.

  4. Let the batter stand for 30 minutes.

Cook

  1. Cook on a hot griddle until golden brown.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Milk and flour 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

Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness to the cakes.
Sour milk or buttermilk
Supplies liquid and acidity that reacts with the leavening to lighten the cakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic milk to produce carbon dioxide, helping the cakes rise.
Baking powder
Provides additional leavening gas so the cakes rise and stay light.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten-based structure that holds the cakes together.

The step that matters

Cook on a hot griddle until golden brown. If the griddle is not hot enough, the cakes spread and absorb fat before setting, becoming dense and pale. Sufficient heat sets the structure quickly and drives browning through the Maillard reaction, giving flavor and color.

“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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