Name: Breakfast Batter-cakes
Ingredients: 2 cups milk; 3 eggs; 2 tablespoons butter; 2 teaspoons yeast; flour (enough to make a stiff batter)

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Breakfast Batter-cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

In a large bowl, combine milk, eggs, butter, and yeast.
Gradually add flour until you achieve a stiff batter.

Rise and bake

Cover the bowl and let the batter rise overnight in a cool place.
The next morning, bake the batter in tin hoops or on a 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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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: Add structure and richness to the batter as they set during cooking.
Yeast: Produces gas during the overnight rise, leavening the batter and giving it a light texture.
Flour: Forms the gluten network that gives the batter its body and holds its shape.
Milk: Hydrates the flour and adds moisture and milk sugars that aid browning.
Butter: Adds fat for tenderness and flavor.

The step that matters

Overnight rise in a cool place. Yeast fermentation is slow in cool conditions, so the batter needs a long rise to become light and airy. Rising too warm or too briefly can leave the cakes dense or uneven in flavor.

“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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Breakfast Batter-cakes