Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Cheap Pancakes
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
Combine sour milk, baking soda, and salt in a bowl and beat well.
Gradually add flour until a thin batter consistency is achieved.
Cook
Heat a frying pan and grease it with lard.
Pour batter into the pan and cook until golden brown on both sides.
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.
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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
- Sour milk
- Provides liquid and acidity that react with the baking soda to lift the batter.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the sour milk's acid to release gas, making the pancakes rise.
- Flour
- Builds the structure that sets the pancake as it cooks.
- Lard
- Greases the pan so the pancakes release, and adds fat that helps them brown.
The step that matters
Cook promptly in a hot, greased pan. Baking soda reacts with the sour milk's acid as soon as they meet, releasing gas that lifts the pancake, so a long delay weakens the rise. A properly hot, greased pan sets the surface quickly so the pancake releases and browns evenly.
“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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