Skip to main content
Dessert

Wheat Batter Cakes

A simple cake made from wheat flour, sour milk, eggs, butter, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Wheat Batter Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the baking soda into the flour thoroughly.

  2. Combine the flour mixture with the sour milk.

  3. Add the beaten egg whites just before baking on a 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.

  1. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

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

  3. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Wheat + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

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

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

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to release gas, and it adds a tangy flavor.
Wheat flour
Its proteins form gluten when mixed with liquid, giving the cakes their structure.
Eggs
Beaten whites trap air that expands in the heat, adding lift and a lighter texture.
Baking soda
It reacts with the acid in the sour milk to produce gas that makes the cakes rise and brown.
Melted butter
It adds fat, which makes the cakes richer and more tender.

The step that matters

Add the beaten egg whites just before baking on a griddle. Beaten whites hold air bubbles that expand when heated. Adding them late keeps those bubbles from collapsing, and it stops the baking soda from reacting too early, so the cakes rise well on the 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.

You might also like

Wheat MuffinsWheat Muffins48 recipesWhole Wheat MuffinsWhole Wheat Muffins12 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes