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Plain Griddle Cakes

A simple batter of flour, baking soda, sour milk, egg, shortening, and salt cooked on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour 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 ↓

Plain Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Sift the dry ingredients together.

  2. Beat the egg yolk, add the sour milk, and stir gradually to make a smooth batter.

  3. Add the melted shortening.

  4. If the batter is not thin enough, add more milk.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg white last.

Cook on the griddle

  1. Pour the batter onto a hot griddle from a large spoon.

  2. When bubbles form on the surface, turn with a broad knife and brown the other side.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Milk and flour 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

Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to produce gas, helping the cakes rise.
Sour milk
Supplies the acid that activates the baking soda and adds moisture and tang.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together as they set.
Egg
The yolk adds richness and binding; the separately beaten white adds lightness and rise.
Shortening
Adds fat for tenderness and helps the cakes brown on the griddle.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg white last. Beaten egg white holds air bubbles that give lightness. Folding gently, added last, keeps those bubbles from collapsing and deflating the batter before it reaches 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.

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