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Dessert

Flannel Cakes

Flannel cakes are yeast‑leavened pancakes made with milk, butter, eggs, flour, and yeast, then fried on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Flannel Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Melt the butter in the milk and stir well.

  2. Let it cool.

  3. Beat the eggs lightly and stir them into the milk along with the flour and yeast.

  4. Set the mixture aside to rise.

Cook and serve

  1. Bake on a griddle until golden brown.

  2. Butter before serving.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter hold together as it cooks.
Flour
Forms the structure of the batter, setting firm as the cakes cook.
Yeast
Produces gas during the rise, making the batter light and airy.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and gives tenderness and browning.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and flavor, and helps the cakes brown.

The step that matters

Set the mixture aside to rise. Yeast needs time to ferment and build gas bubbles. Rising too briefly leaves the cakes dense, while the batter should not be added until it has cooled, since heat can kill yeast.

“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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