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 ↓
Griddle Cakes
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the batter
Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.
Add the milk gradually to make a batter similar to thick cream.
Fry a spoonful to test the consistency; add more milk if too thick or more flour if too thin.
Stir in the melted butter last.
Cook
Pour batter from a large spoon onto a hot, greased griddle.
Cook until bubbles form on one side, then flip and brown the other side until it stops puffing.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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
- Flour
- Forms the structure of the batter so the cakes hold their shape when cooked.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas when heated, making the cakes rise and puff on the griddle.
- Sweet milk
- Hydrates the flour and sets the batter's thickness, adding moisture to the cakes.
- Melted butter
- Adds fat for richness and tenderness, and helps the cakes brown on the griddle.
The step that matters
Testing the consistency. The flour and milk ratio is not fixed, so a test spoonful shows whether the batter is too thick or too thin. Batter that is too stiff cooks dense, while batter that is too loose spreads and does not hold its shape.
“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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