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Dessert

Sweet Griddle Cakes

A batter of milk, eggs, sugar, butter, flour, and baking powder is cooked on a greased griddle into small cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Sweet Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs, whites and yolks separately until well frothed.

  2. Stir the melted butter, powdered sugar, and 1 cup of flour mixed with baking powder into the yolks.

  3. Add the milk.

  4. Add the whipped egg whites, mixing gently.

  5. If needed, add more flour to achieve a moderately thin batter.

Cook and serve

  1. Bake small cakes on a greased griddle.

  2. Butter each cake as it comes off.

  3. Stack 4 cakes with very thin layers of sweet jelly between them.

  4. Sprinkle powdered sugar on top.

  5. Serve four cakes to each person as a dessert.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Whipped whites trap air for lift, while yolks add richness and structure.
Flour
Its proteins and starches set during cooking to give the cakes structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cakes rise and become light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and gives the batter its moisture and tenderness.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor, and helps prevent sticking on the griddle.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown lightly on the griddle.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Whites must be whipped until well frothed and folded in gently, since stirring hard knocks out the trapped air that gives the cakes their lift.

“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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