Skip to main content
Main

Flannel Cakes

A batter of Indian meal and wheat flour, leavened with yeast, baked on a griddle and served hot with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Wheat and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,373 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Flannel Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the Indian meal and wheat flour together.

  2. Add enough tepid water to make a batter, slightly thicker than for buckwheat cakes.

  3. Stir in the salt and yeast, then set the mixture in a warm place to rise.

Bake and serve

  1. Once light, bake the batter on a griddle.

  2. Butter the cakes and serve hot.

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. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Indian meal
Gives the cakes their coarse, hearty body and corn flavour.
Wheat flour
Adds gluten-forming structure so the cakes hold together when baked.
Yeast
Ferments the batter so it rises and becomes light and airy.

The step that matters

Letting the batter rise until light. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce gas that lightens the batter. Baking before it has risen gives dense, flat cakes, so wait until it looks visibly airy before griddling.

“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.

You might also like

Wheat GruelWheat Gruel6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes