Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓
Crumpets, or Flannel Cakes
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the batter
Warm the milk and butter together until lukewarm, but not hot.
Beat the egg and add it to the milk mixture along with salt.
Stir in enough flour to form a batter, then add the yeast.
Rise and bake
Set the batter aside to rise until light.
Grease a bake-iron and bake the batter like buckwheat cakes.
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.
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Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,418 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,373 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + wheattop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,002 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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
- Wheat flour
- Forms the batter's structure, setting into the crumpet's body when cooked.
- Yeast
- Ferments the batter, producing gas bubbles that lighten and open the crumb.
- Egg
- Adds protein that helps bind the batter and firm up during cooking.
- Milk
- Supplies the liquid that hydrates the flour and loosens the batter.
- Butter
- Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a richer flavour.
The step that matters
Set the batter aside to rise until light.. Yeast fermentation produces the gas bubbles that give crumpets their open, holey texture. If the batter is not allowed to rise fully, the crumpets will bake up dense and flat.
“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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