Name: Indian Griddle Cakes
Ingredients: 1 quart sour milk; 1 large tablespoon butter, melted; 2 eggs; 1 teaspoon baking soda; ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ⅔ cup Indian meal; ⅓ cup flour

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 ↓

Indian Griddle Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

Combine sour milk, melted butter, eggs, baking soda, and coarse sea salt in a bowl.
Mix in the Indian meal and flour to create a thin batter.

Cook

Rub a griddle with a small bag of coarse salt instead of lard.
Pour the batter onto the 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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour 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 that lightens the batter.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to release carbon dioxide, helping the pancakes rise.
Eggs: Add structure and richness, helping the pancakes hold together while cooking.
Butter: Adds fat for flavour and a tender texture.
Indian meal: Gives the pancakes their cornmeal body and grainy texture.
Flour: Adds structure so the thin batter sets into a cohesive pancake.

“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.