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Sour Cream Waffles

A waffle made with eggs, sour cream, baking soda, salt, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sour Cream Waffles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs until light.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in the sour cream and add it to the eggs.

  3. Stir in the salt and enough flour to create a thin batter.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the batter onto a hot, well-greased waffle iron.

  2. Close the iron and turn it; after a few minutes, turn it again.

  3. When the waffles are brown on both sides, stack them in layers.

  4. Serve very hot with butter or honey.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and flour 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

Eggs
Add structure and richness to the batter as they set during cooking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Sour cream
Adds moisture, tang, and fat, and its acidity activates the baking soda.
Flour
Provides the starch and protein that set the batter into a crisp, cooked waffle.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in the sour cream and add it to the eggs. Baking soda needs an acid to react. Dissolving it fully in the acidic sour cream spreads the reaction evenly, so the batter rises uniformly instead of leaving pockets of soda or bitter patches.

“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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