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Bread

Bread Pancakes

A batter made from soaked bread, sour milk, baking soda, flour, and cooked on a buttered griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Bread Pancakes

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 Pancakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Soak the bread in just enough sweet milk to moisten it thoroughly.

  2. Mash the soaked bread until it forms a smooth paste.

  3. Add the sour milk and dissolved baking soda, mixing well.

  4. Stir in enough flour to create a batter that is thin but not too thick.

Cook

  1. Test the batter by cooking a small pancake on a hot, buttered 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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Bread
Provides the bulk and body of the batter once soaked and mashed.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help the pancakes rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Flour
Adds structure so the batter holds together when cooked.

The step that matters

Test the batter by cooking a small pancake on a hot, buttered griddle.. Batter consistency is hard to judge by eye. A test pancake shows whether it is too thick or too thin before the whole batch is cooked, and a hot, buttered griddle helps prevent sticking and gives even browning.

“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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