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Flannel Cakes

Flannel cakes are small pancakes made with egg, butter, sour milk, baking soda, flour, cornmeal, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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

Prepare the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg well.

  2. Add the butter and mix until combined.

  3. Stir in the sour milk and baking soda.

  4. Gradually add the flour and cornmeal, mixing until smooth.

  5. Add a pinch of salt to taste.

Cook

  1. Cook on a greased skillet over medium heat until golden brown on both sides.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Egg
Binds the batter and adds richness and structure to the cakes.
Sour milk
Provides the liquid and acidity that reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lightens the cakes.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cakes as its starch sets when cooked.
Cornmeal
Adds a slightly gritty texture and helps the cakes brown.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the batter.

The step that matters

Cook on a greased skillet over medium heat until golden brown on both sides. Medium heat lets the cakes cook through before the outside browns too fast. Batter that is not set in the middle can stay raw and gummy, and cooking too hot scorches the surface.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, milk, flour):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Pecansfits about as well
  4. Milletfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, milk, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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