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Dessert

Griddle-cake Batter

A batter for making griddle cakes, made with flour, salt, baking soda, cream of tartar, milk, butter, and eggs.

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 ↓

Griddle-cake Batter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

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

  2. Gradually add the milk, stirring until smooth.

  3. Stir in the melted butter.

  4. Beat the eggs well and add them to the mixture.

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. Flour + milktop 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together as they set.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that lifts the cakes.
Cream of tartar
Supplies acid that activates the baking soda, helping the cakes rise and stay tender.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture and richness to the batter.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help bind the batter.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, and helps the cakes brown.

The step that matters

Pour batter onto the hot griddle and cook until golden brown. If the griddle is not hot enough, the cakes spread and absorb grease without setting. If it is too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks through. Gas is released quickly from the activated leavening, so cakes should be cooked promptly once the batter is mixed.

“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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