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Dessert

Flannel Cakes

Flannel cakes are a thick batter pancake made with eggs, flour, yeast, salt, and milk, baked on a greased griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk 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 ↓

Flannel Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Beat the eggs until very light.

  2. Stir in the flour, yeast, salt, and enough milk to make a thick batter.

  3. Prepare the batter the night before for breakfast or in the morning for tea.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a griddle and grease it well.

  2. Bake the cakes like buckwheat cakes and serve them hot to the table.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk 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

Eggs
Beaten eggs add air and structure, helping the batter hold together and lighten.
Flour
Provides the main structure of the batter once it is set on the griddle.
Yeast
Produces gas that leavens the batter, giving the cakes a light, airy texture.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and loosens the mixture into a batter that spreads and cooks through.

The step that matters

Heat and grease the griddle well. A properly hot, well-greased griddle sets the outside of the batter quickly, so the cakes release cleanly and brown evenly rather than sticking or spreading thin.

“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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