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Dessert

Wheat Cakes

A simple batter of egg yolks, sugar, salt, milk, flour, baking powder, and egg whites cooked on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Wheat Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg yolks with sugar and salt.

  2. Add sweet milk and enough flour to make a batter.

  3. Mix in the baking powder.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites last.

Cook

  1. Cook on a hot griddle 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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 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

Egg whites
Whipped whites trap air, helping the cakes rise and become light.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, leavening the batter so the cakes rise.
Flour
Provides the starch and protein that give the batter body and structure.
Sweet milk
Adds liquid that hydrates the flour and keeps the cakes moist.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown on the griddle.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites last. The whites hold air that makes the cakes light. Stirring them vigorously or mixing them in too early deflates the foam, so the cakes come out denser. Fold gently and cook soon after.

“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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