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Wheat Griddle Cakes

A batter of sour milk, flour, butter, salt, and baking soda baked into small cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Wheat Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine sour milk, salt, and melted butter.

  2. Add flour gradually until the batter reaches the right consistency.

  3. Beat the mixture until very smooth.

  4. Just before baking, add enough baking soda to sweeten the milk.

Test and bake

  1. Bake a small trial cake to check if the batter is correct.

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 + buttertop 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).

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

Sour milk
Provides the liquid base and acidity that reacts with baking soda.
Flour
Gives the batter its body and structure once it sets in the pan.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavour in the cakes.
Baking soda
Neutralises the milk's acidity and helps the cakes rise and brown.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda just before baking. Baking soda reacts with the acid in sour milk as soon as it is mixed in, releasing gas that lifts the batter. If it sits too long, the gas escapes and the cakes turn out flatter.

“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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