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Flannel Cakes

A batter of flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, eggs, milk, and butter baked on a griddle to make thin cakes.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Sift together the flour, brown sugar, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and milk, and beat into a smooth, thin batter.

  3. Stir in the melted butter.

Cook and serve

  1. Bake on a hot griddle until rich brown.

  2. Keep the cakes small, no larger than a tea saucer.

  3. Serve with maple syrup.

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. 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
Provides the structure that holds the pancake together as it sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, so the pancakes rise and turn light.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter set around the cooked centre.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and makes the batter thin enough to spread on the griddle.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour, and helps the pancakes brown.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and promotes browning on the griddle surface.

The step that matters

Bake on a hot griddle until rich brown. Heat must be high enough to set the batter quickly and brown the surface through the Maillard reaction. A cool griddle makes pancakes pale, soggy, and dense, while a very hot one can scorch the outside before the centre cooks.

“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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