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Bread Griddle-cakes

A griddle cake made from stale bread crumbs, milk, flour, eggs, butter, salt, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Bread Griddle-cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the stale bread crumbs and milk until smooth.

  2. Stir in the melted butter and beaten eggs.

  3. Add enough flour to bind the mixture.

  4. Mix in the baking powder.

Cook

  1. Cook 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.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Stale bread crumbs
Soak up the milk and give the batter body and a soft, tender crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set on the griddle.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it holds together when cooked.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the pancakes rise and stay light.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the pancakes brown on the griddle.

The step that matters

Cook on a griddle until golden brown. Heat that is too high browns the outside before the centre sets, while heat that is too low leaves the pancakes pale and soggy. Steady medium heat lets the batter cook through and brown 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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