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Batter with Sour Milk

A batter made with sour milk, flour, and leavening, cooked on a griddle to produce pancakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Batter with Sour Milk

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Sift the flour with the salt, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

  2. Gradually add the sour milk, stirring until smooth.

  3. If using, melt the butter and add it to the mixture.

  4. Beat the egg well and then add it to the batter.

Cook

  1. Heat a griddle and grease it with lard or a mix of butter and lard.

  2. Pour batter onto the hot griddle and cook until golden brown.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to produce gas, helping the pancakes rise.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten structure that holds the pancakes together.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping bind the batter and set during cooking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to release carbon dioxide for lift and tenderness.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that supports the leavening reaction and helps keep the batter stable.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture, and helps browning on the griddle.

The step that matters

Gradually add the sour milk, stirring until smooth.. Mixing too vigorously after the liquid goes in develops gluten and toughens the pancakes, while stirring just until smooth keeps them tender. Adding the milk gradually helps avoid lumps in the flour.

“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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