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Dessert

Flannel Cakes

Flannel cakes are a sweet batter made with boiled milk, flour, eggs, butter, sugar, salt, and baking powder, baked in an oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Flannel Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a mixing bowl, combine half of the boiled milk with the sifted flour and stir until smooth.

  3. Add the remaining milk and salt to the batter, then mix in the egg yolks and baking powder.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites with 1 tablespoon of sugar until stiff peaks form.

  5. Gently fold the egg whites into the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased pan and bake immediately.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the cakes together as they cook.
Eggs
Egg whites trap air for lightness, while the yolks add richness and structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cakes to rise in the oven.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and provides moisture, so the batter becomes a pourable mixture.
Butter
Adds fat, which contributes tenderness and a richer flavor to the cakes.
White granulated sugar
Sweetens the cakes and helps the whipped egg whites hold stable peaks.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold the air that makes the cakes light. Folding gently keeps that air in the batter, and baking right away keeps the baking powder's lift from fading.

“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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