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Breakfast

Flannel Cakes

A batter of eggs, flour, yeast, salt, and milk is cooked on a greased griddle to make flannel cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs until very light.

  2. Stir in the flour, yeast, salt, and enough milk to create a thick batter.

  3. Prepare the batter the night before for breakfast or in the morning for tea.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a griddle and grease it well.

  2. Pour batter onto the griddle.

  3. Cook like buckwheat cakes.

  4. Serve hot with butter after the family is seated.

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. Flour + milktop 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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Eggs
Beaten until light, they add air and structure to the thick batter.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cakes together as they cook.
Yeast
Produces gas as it works in the batter, helping the cakes rise and become light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and loosens the eggs into a pourable batter.

The step that matters

Prepare the batter the night before. Yeast needs time to ferment the batter, which develops flavor and lightens the texture. Resting it too briefly or skipping this step leaves the cakes dense.

“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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