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Dessert

Crumpets with Baking Powder

A batter of flour, baking powder, butter, sugar or molasses, salt, and milk-water mixture baked into golden rings.

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

Crumpets with Baking Powder

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

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

  2. Gradually add the milk and water, beating until you have a smooth, thick batter.

  3. Stir in the melted butter.

Cook

  1. Bake in greased rings on a griddle until golden.

  2. For flat cakes, thin the batter with more milk and pour onto the griddle, flipping when bubbles form.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the batter once mixed with liquid.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the crumpets rise and form their holes.
Butter
Adds richness and softness to the finished crumpets.
Sugar or molasses
Adds sweetness and helps the crumpets brown on the griddle.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps the batter set and brown.

The step that matters

Beating the batter to a smooth, thick consistency. Beating develops the flour's structure and evens out the batter so gas from the baking powder forms even bubbles. Batter that is too thin will spread and lose its rise.

“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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