Name: Griddle Cakes Without Eggs
Ingredients: 1 pint sour milk; a pinch of salt; flour (enough to make a stiff batter); 1 level teaspoon baking soda; hot water (to dissolve baking soda); sweet milk (enough to thin the batter)

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 ↓

Griddle Cakes Without Eggs

Ingredients

1 pint sour milk
a pinch of salt
flour (enough to make a stiff batter)
1 level teaspoon baking soda
hot water (to dissolve baking soda)
sweet milk (enough to thin the batter)

Directions

In a bowl, combine 1 pint of sour milk with a pinch of salt.
Add enough flour to create a stiff batter and beat until perfectly smooth.
Dissolve 1 level teaspoon of baking soda in hot water and add it to the batter.
Stir in enough sweet milk to thin the batter for baking on a hot griddle.

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

What each ingredient does

Sour milk: Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to produce gas, which lightens the batter.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to release carbon dioxide, making the cakes rise.
Flour: Provides structure, setting the batter into a stiff, cake-like body as it cooks.
Sweet milk: Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a pourable consistency for the griddle.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda in hot water and folding it in. Baking soda needs to be fully dissolved so it spreads evenly through the batter. Clumps leave pockets of bitter soda and uneven rising. Add it promptly, since the gas-producing reaction starts once it meets the acid.

“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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Griddle Cakes Without Eggs