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Dessert

Stale Bread Griddle Cakes

A quick griddle cake made from soaked stale breadcrumbs, flour, eggs, milk, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By North End Club (Chicago, Ill.) · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Stale Bread Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Soak 2 cups of stale breadcrumbs in a quart of boiling hot milk for one hour.

  2. Pour the soaked breadcrumbs into a bowl.

  3. Separate the yolks and whites of 2 eggs; beat the yolks until light.

  4. Add the beaten yolks to the soaked breadcrumbs, then add 3 ounces of flour, a tablespoon of melted butter, and a small teaspoon of salt; beat well.

  5. Stir in 2 teaspoons of baking powder and the beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Grease a griddle and bake the mixture quickly into small thin cakes until golden brown.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

682Calories
27 gProtein
14 gFat
108 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 4 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By North End Club (Chicago, Ill.). 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. See the original page.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Stale breadcrumbs
Absorb the hot milk and form the soft body of the cakes.
Flour
Adds structure so the batter holds together as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the cakes rise and turn light.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter; whites, beaten in, add lift and lightness.
Milk
Softens the breadcrumbs into a moist batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stirring in the whites too vigorously knocks out the air they hold, and the baking powder then has less air to expand, so the cakes come out denser.

“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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