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Rye Griddle Cakes

A griddle cake made with rye and wheat flour, sour milk or buttermilk, salt, baking soda, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Rye Griddle Cakes

Why it works: Rye and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Rye Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine rye flour and wheat flour.

  2. Add enough sour milk or buttermilk to create a thick batter.

  3. Stir in coarse sea salt and baking soda dissolved in warm water.

  4. Add the well-beaten egg and mix until smooth.

Cook

  1. Cook on a preheated griddle until golden brown on both sides.

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.

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.

  1. Rye + wheattop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

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

  3. Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rye + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together918 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rye flour
Forms the bulk of the batter, giving the cakes a dense, earthy structure.
Wheat flour
Adds gluten-forming proteins that give the cakes more structure and tenderness than rye alone.
Sour milk or buttermilk
Supplies moisture and acidity that react with the baking soda to help the cakes rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk or buttermilk to produce carbon dioxide for lift.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds richness and structure as it sets during cooking.

The step that matters

Cook on a preheated griddle until golden brown on both sides. If the griddle is too cool, the cakes absorb grease and spread without browning; if too hot, the outside burns before the centre sets. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction, which needs steady, moderate heat.

“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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