Skip to main content
Bread

Bread Pancakes

Bread Pancakes are made by soaking bread crumbs in water, adding sour milk, eggs, baking soda, salt, flour, and baking on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Bread Pancakes

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

  1. Soak bread pieces in water until soft, then press through a colander.

  2. Cover the mixture with sour milk.

  3. Add the beaten eggs, baking soda, and salt.

  4. Stir in enough flour to make a batter thicker than buckwheat batter.

Cook

  1. Bake slowly on a 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.

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.

  1. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 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

Bread crusts and crumbs
Provides the bulk and body of the batter, with starch that thickens as it soaks.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the pancakes set on the griddle.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help the pancakes rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Flour
Adds structure and thickens the batter to the consistency described.

The step that matters

Stir in enough flour to make a batter thicker than buckwheat batter. Too thin a batter spreads and cooks flat, while the right thickness holds its shape. Flour sets the structure, and the baking soda needs the acid in the milk to lift it.

“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.

You might also like

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesNut BreadNut Bread109 recipesWheat BreadWheat Bread65 recipes