Skip to main content
Breakfast

Pancakes with Buttermilk

A quick batter of buttermilk, flour, baking soda, salt, and optional egg cooked on a griddle.

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

Why it works: Buttermilk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Pancakes with Buttermilk

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Crush the baking soda and mix it with the coarse sea salt into the buttermilk.

  2. Gradually add the flour while beating until the batter is smooth.

Cook

  1. Preheat a griddle over medium‑high heat and pour batter onto it.

  2. Cook until bubbles form, then flip and cook until golden brown.

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. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Buttermilk + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,986 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Buttermilk
Provides moisture and acidity, which reacts with the baking soda to help the pancakes rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to release gas, lifting the batter so the pancakes rise.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure that sets the pancake as it cooks.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping bind the batter and set during cooking.

The step that matters

Adding the flour while beating. Adding flour gradually and beating only until smooth keeps the batter from being overmixed. Overmixing develops too much gluten, which makes pancakes tough and chewy rather than tender.

“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

Rice GruelRice Gruel28 recipesPeptoned Milk GruelPeptoned Milk Gruel9 recipes