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Stale Bread Griddle Cakes

A batter of stale bread crumbs, sour milk, egg, and baking soda is cooked on a griddle to make crumb pancakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Stale Bread Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in warm water until soft.

  2. Drain the water and add sour milk, baking soda, coarse sea salt, and the beaten egg.

  3. Thicken the mixture with flour to make a batter.

Cook

  1. Cook on a griddle 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.

  1. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Milk and flour 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

Bread crumbs
Soaked until soft, they add body and tender texture to the batter.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to lift the pancakes and add tang.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that makes the pancakes rise.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps hold the pancakes together while cooking.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it holds its shape on the griddle.

The step that matters

Cook on a griddle until golden brown. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction between sugars and proteins at the surface. Cooking too cool leaves the pancakes pale and gummy inside, while too hot browns the outside before the center sets.

“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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