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Dessert

Flannel Cakes

A yeast-leavened cake made with orange blossom flour and cornmeal, baked on a griddle until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and corn work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 586 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Flannel Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Dissolve the yeast and salt in warm water.

  2. Stir in the orange blossom flour and cornmeal until combined.

  3. Let the mixture rise until light.

Cook

  1. Bake on a griddle 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. Orange + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together586 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Orange + flourtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,821 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Yeast
Produces gas as it feeds, which lightens the batter and makes it rise.
Orange blossom flour
Forms the main structure once it is hydrated with the water.
Corn meal
Adds a coarse, grainy texture and helps the cake brown on the griddle.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture rise until light. The yeast's gas is what lightens the batter. If it rises too little the cakes will be dense, and if it rises too long the structure can weaken and collapse, so judge by lightness rather than time.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, corn):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, corn. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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