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Dessert

Batter Cakes

A simple cake made from sour buttermilk, eggs, flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, and water, baked on a hot griddle.

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

Batter Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Pour sour buttermilk into the beaten yolks of the eggs.

  2. Add sugar, salt, and flour.

  3. Stir until light and smooth.

  4. Dissolve baking soda in a little warm water and add to the batter.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg whites last.

Cook

  1. Bake on a very hot griddle.

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. Buttermilk + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Egg and flour 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter and the whipped whites lighten it, helping the cakes rise and stay tender.
Sour buttermilk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to produce gas, leavening the batter and adding tang.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour buttermilk to release carbon dioxide, making the cakes rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together as they set on the griddle.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites last. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the whites intact. Stirring them in hard knocks out that air, so the cakes rise less and turn out denser.

“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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