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Flannel Griddle Cakes

Flannel Griddle Cakes are batter pancakes cooked on a griddle, served hot with maple syrup.

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

Flannel Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and mix with the milk to form a batter.

Cook and serve

  1. Preheat a griddle over high heat.

  2. Pour batter onto the griddle in tea-saucer-sized portions.

  3. Cook until browned on both sides and serve hot with maple syrup.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Flour and milk 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

Flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the cakes their body and structure.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set on the griddle.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, causing the batter to rise and become light.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid so the flour hydrates into a pourable batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during cooking.

The step that matters

Cook until browned on both sides. Heat sets the batter from the outside in, so the cake must be cooked long enough for the surface to firm before flipping. Flipping too early tears the cake, while cooking too long on one side leaves the other pale or underdone.

“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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