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Breakfast

Economical Pancakes

A pancake batter made with wheat flour, stale bread, yeast, sugar, salt, eggs, baking soda, and lukewarm water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and bread match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 209 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Economical Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine wheat flour and crumbled stale bread.

  2. Dissolve yeast in lukewarm water and add to the flour mixture.

  3. Stir in sugar, salt, and beaten eggs.

  4. Cover and let the batter sit overnight.

Finish and cook

  1. In the morning, dissolve baking soda in lukewarm water and add to the batter.

  2. Beat well and bake 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. Wheat + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together209 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Wheat flour
Forms the main structure of the batter.
Stale bread
Adds moisture and body to the batter.
Yeast
Ferments the batter overnight, producing gas that lightens the pancakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidity in the batter to help it rise and brown.

The step that matters

Let the batter sit overnight. The yeast needs time to ferment the flour and bread, creating gas bubbles that give the pancakes their lightness and a slightly sour flavor. Rushing this step leaves the batter dense.

“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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