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Breakfast

Wheat Cakes

A simple batter made from flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, milk, and butter, cooked on a skillet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Wheat Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar.

  2. Add milk and melted butter; stir until smooth.

Cook the cakes

  1. Heat a skillet over medium heat and grease lightly.

  2. Pour batter onto the skillet to form cakes.

  3. Cook until bubbles form, then flip and brown the other side.

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. 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. Sugar + buttertop 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 as the starch that sets when heated.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, making the cakes rise and become light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and gives the batter its liquid body and tenderness.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness, and helps the cakes brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Cook until bubbles form, then flip. Bubbles appearing on the surface show the bottom has set enough to hold its shape; flipping earlier can tear the cake, while waiting too long can overcook it and dry the centre.

“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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