Skip to main content
Breakfast

Flour Pancakes

A batter of sour milk, egg, salt, baking soda, and flour cooked on a griddle and served with maple syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Flour Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

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

  2. Gradually add flour to form a batter.

Cook and serve

  1. Preheat a griddle over high heat.

  2. Pour batter onto the griddle and cook until golden brown on both sides.

  3. Serve hot with maple syrup.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + maple syruptop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together798 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Flour + maple syruptop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,034 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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 baking soda to produce gas that lifts the pancakes.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness to the pancakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk to produce carbon dioxide, helping the pancakes rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pancakes together as they set.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour to form a batter. Adding flour gradually lets you reach a smooth batter without lumps. Overmixing once flour is in develops gluten, which can make pancakes tough and chewy.

“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.

More pancakes recipes

Buckwheat 148Rice 104French 71Cornmeal 65Potato 62Cream 36 See all 241 →

You might also like

Rice GruelRice Gruel28 recipesPeptoned Milk GruelPeptoned Milk Gruel9 recipes