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Dessert

Buttermilk Cakes

A simple cake made with flour, eggs, buttermilk, salt, and baking soda, baked on a greaseless griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and buttermilk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Buttermilk Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the flour, eggs, buttermilk, and salt until well combined.

  2. Beat the mixture until light and fluffy.

  3. Just before baking, stir in the baking soda mixed with a little buttermilk.

Bake

  1. Bake on a griddle that is free from grease.

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. Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + buttermilktop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,986 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 that holds the cakes together as they cook.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help bind the batter.
Buttermilk
Adds moisture and acidity, and reacts with the baking soda to aid rising.
Baking soda
Reacts with the buttermilk's acid to produce gas that makes the cakes rise.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda just before baking. Baking soda reacts with the acid in buttermilk right away and releases gas. If the batter waits, much of that lift is lost, so the cakes may bake up flat and dense.

“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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