Name: Buckwheat Cakes with Sour Milk
Ingredients: 1 quart sour milk; flour (enough to make a batter); 1 tablespoon salt; 1 teaspoon baking soda

Why it works: Milk and flour 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 ↓

Buckwheat Cakes with Sour Milk

Ingredients

1 quart sour milk
flour (enough to make a batter)
1 tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda

Directions

In a bowl, combine sour milk and enough flour to create a batter that is not too stiff.
Add salt and baking soda, adjusting the baking soda if the milk is very sour.
Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto a hot griddle or skillet and cook 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.

Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Tomato Soup526 recipes

Brown Bread461 recipes

Mutton Broth292 recipes

Yorkshire Pudding264 recipes

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Buckwheat Cakes with Sour Milk