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Dessert

Flannel Cakes

Flannel cakes are a light, fluffy pancake made with butter, sugar, milk, eggs, flour, baking powder, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Flannel Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the milk and beaten egg yolks to the creamed mixture.

  4. Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Cook

  1. Cook on a greased skillet over medium heat until golden brown on both sides.

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. Butter + milktop 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
Whites beaten stiff and folded in trap air, giving the cakes a light, airy lift.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cakes to rise and become tender.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together as they set.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and gives the batter its pourable consistency.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb, and helps the cakes brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites gently. Stiffly beaten whites hold air bubbles that give the cakes their lift. Vigorous stirring knocks that air out, leaving dense, flat cakes.

“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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