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Thin Welsh Barley Cake

A thin pancake-like cake made from barley meal and milk, served with cold butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Thin Welsh Barley Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the barley meal and milk until you have a batter consistency.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the batter slowly onto a hot griddle to form a circle the size of a small plate.

  2. Bake slowly until the cake is very thin but soft, similar to a pancake.

  3. Serve with cold butter.

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. Barley + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  3. Barley + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Barley meal
Forms the body of the cake and gives it its earthy, grainy flavour.
Milk
Hydrates the barley meal into a pourable batter and keeps the cake soft.

The step that matters

Pouring the batter slowly onto the hot griddle. Pouring slowly lets the batter spread into a thin, even circle. A hot surface sets the outside quickly, so a thick pour or a cool pan can leave the cake uneven or doughy in the centre.

“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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