Name: Crumb Griddle Cakes
Ingredients: 1 quart sour milk; 4 eggs; 2 teaspoons baking soda; 1 tablespoon melted butter; cornmeal (enough to achieve desired consistency)

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 ↓

Crumb Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Soak bread crumbs in sour milk overnight.
In the morning, strain the mixture through a sieve.
Add beaten eggs, baking soda dissolved in a little water, and melted butter.
Stir in cornmeal until the batter is the consistency of ordinary griddle cakes.
Beat egg whites separately and fold them in just before cooking.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

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