Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓
Bread Pancakes
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the batter
Break stale bread into bits and cover with sour milk.
Set aside overnight.
Add 1 teaspoon of baking soda for each pint of the mixture.
Beat until smooth and foamy.
If needed, add sweet milk to thin the batter.
Season with salt.
Cook
Fry on a griddle until golden brown.
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.
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Bread + milktop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Stale bread
- Soaks up the sour milk and forms the body of the batter.
- Sour milk
- Softens the bread and reacts with the baking soda to lighten the batter.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acidity of the sour milk to produce gas that makes the pancakes rise.
The step that matters
Adding the baking soda. Baking soda must be measured against the sour milk mixture and mixed in promptly. Too little leaves the pancakes dense, and too much can leave a soapy, bitter taste and browning that is too dark.
“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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