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Breakfast

Rye Pancakes

A batter of rye meal, sour milk, eggs, molasses, baking soda, and salt cooked in hot drippings to make thick pancakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and rye work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 918 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Rye Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Dissolve the baking soda in a little warm water and stir it into the milk.

  2. Thoroughly beat the eggs and add them to the milk mixture.

  3. Stir in enough rye meal to create a thick batter that drops from a spoon.

Cook the pancakes

  1. Heat a Scotch kettle with hot drippings.

  2. Dip your spoon into the drippings before scooping the batter to help it slide off easily.

  3. Cook the pancakes until they are a nice brown outside and light inside.

  4. Test doneness with a knitting needle; if it comes out smoothly, the pancakes are done.

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 + ryetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together918 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Molasses + ryetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Egg + ryetop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together484 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Buttermilk or sour milk
Provides acidity that activates the baking soda, helping the pancakes rise and stay tender.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the batter so the pancakes hold together.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic milk to release gas, leavening the batter so it turns light inside.
Rye meal
Forms the body of the batter and gives the pancakes their characteristic flavor and texture.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and depth of flavor, and helps the outside brown during cooking.

The step that matters

Cooking the pancakes in hot drippings. The kettle and drippings must be hot enough to set the batter quickly and brown the outside. Dipping the spoon in drippings keeps the sticky batter from clinging, so each pancake releases cleanly.

“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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