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Bread Cakes

Bread cakes are made by soaking stale bread in milk, mixing with eggs, flour, salt, and frying until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Bread Cakes

Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Bread Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Soak stale bread in milk and strain through a fine colander.

  2. Beat in the yolks of 4 eggs and enough flour to make a thin batter.

  3. Add 1 teaspoon of saleratus.

Fry

  1. Just before frying, fold in the beaten egg whites.

  2. Heat a griddle and fry the batter until golden.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Stale bread
Provides the body of the batter as it soaks up milk and softens.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter together.
Flour
Gives the batter structure so it holds together while frying.
Saleratus
Releases gas that lightens the batter and helps it rise.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they add air that makes the cakes light.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Fold them in gently just before frying so the air whipped into the whites is not lost. Deflated batter fries up denser and flatter.

“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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