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Bread

Bread Cakes

Bread cakes are batter cakes made from soaked bread, flour, baking powder, milk, eggs, salt, butter, and cooked on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Bread Cakes

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Bread Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Drain the soaked bread in the morning.

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour and baking powder.

  3. Beat the soaked bread with enough milk to make a batter.

  4. Add the beaten eggs, salt, and the flour mixture to the bread batter.

  5. Stir in the melted butter until the mixture flows easily from the spoon.

Cook the cakes

  1. Grease a hot griddle with salt pork.

  2. Drop a spoonful of batter for each cake onto the griddle.

  3. 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

Flour and butter 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

Dry bread
Soaked overnight, it breaks down into the body of the batter and gives the cakes their base.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure so the cakes hold together on the griddle.
All-purpose flour
Adds starch that thickens the batter and helps the cakes set.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cakes rise and turn light.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and loosens the batter so it flows easily from the spoon.

The step that matters

Stir in the melted butter until the mixture flows easily from the spoon. The batter needs the right consistency: too thick and the cakes stay dense, too thin and they spread out and do not hold their shape on the hot griddle.

“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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