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Bread Cakes

Bread cakes made from dry bread, water, buttermilk, eggs, baking soda, salt, and flour, baked on a griddle.

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

Why it works: Buttermilk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Bread Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Pour boiling water over the dry bread and cover for a few minutes.

  2. Mash the bread finely.

Make and cook the batter

  1. Add buttermilk, baking soda, beaten eggs, salt, and enough flour to form a dough.

  2. Bake on a griddle until golden brown.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Bread + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Buttermilk + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,986 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Dry bread
Soaked in boiling water, it softens and becomes the body of the cakes.
Eggs
Beaten eggs add structure and richness to the dough as it sets.
Buttermilk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda, helping the cakes rise and adding tang.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce gas that lightens the cakes.
Flour
Adds structure so the mixture holds together as a dough.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda to the buttermilk. Baking soda needs an acid such as buttermilk to produce the gas that leavens the cakes. Mixing it in without enough acid, or letting the dough sit too long before cooking, can leave the cakes flat and 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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