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Crumpets with Baking Powder

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

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, mixing until you have a smooth, thick batter.

  3. Stir in the melted butter.

Cook

  1. Grease rings on a griddle and pour in the batter to bake.

  2. For flat cakes, thin the batter with more milk and pour directly onto the griddle.

  3. Turn the cakes over when bubbles form on the surface.

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
Provides the structure that holds the crumpet's airy body together.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, creating the bubbles and rise that give crumpets their holes.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, softening the crumb and adding flavour.
Sugar or molasses
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown on the griddle.
Milk and water
Hydrates the flour to form a batter that can be poured and set.

The step that matters

Turn the cakes over when bubbles form on the surface. Bubbles rising through the batter show the cake has set enough to flip. Turning too early can tear the cake and deflate its open structure, while waiting too long can dry it out and over-brown the base.

“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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