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Plain Griddle Cakes

A simple batter of flour, salt, baking powder, butter, eggs, and milk baked on a hot griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Plain Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the dry ingredients and sift them together several times.

  2. Cut in the butter.

  3. Separate the yolks and whites of the eggs.

Make the batter

  1. Add the milk to the yolks and mix well.

  2. Combine the yolk mixture with the dry ingredients.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

Cook

  1. Bake immediately on a hot griddle.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the batter once mixed with liquid.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the griddle cakes rise and turn light.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the cakes and gives a rich flavour.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and binding; whites, beaten and folded in, add lift.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and forms the batter.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the whites. Deflating them makes the cakes denser, so the batter should be combined with slow, careful strokes.

“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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