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Breakfast Butter Cakes

A quick batter of sour milk, baking soda, salt, boiled rice, molasses or sugar, ginger, and flour, pan‑fried into golden cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Breakfast Butter Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine sour milk, baking soda, and salt.

  2. Add boiled rice, molasses (or sugar), and ginger.

  3. Mix well and gradually add flour until a stiff batter forms.

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. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Rice + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,196 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Molasses + gingertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Ginger + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 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
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to produce gas that lightens the cakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk to produce carbon dioxide, helping the cakes rise.
Boiled rice
Adds body and a soft, tender texture to the batter.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a deeper colour that helps the cakes brown.
Flour
Provides structure so the batter holds together as a stiff batter when cooked.

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 far. Sugars and molasses brown quickly, so heat that is too high can scorch the surface while the centre stays raw.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, rice, molasses, 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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