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Bread Griddle Cakes with Milk

A batter of soaked stale bread, milk, eggs, salt, sugar, and spice is cooked on a griddle.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Soak pieces of stale bread in milk until soft.

  2. Strain the mixture through a coarse sieve.

  3. Season with salt, sugar, and spice.

  4. Add 4 eggs to the mixture and enough bread to make a thick batter.

Cook

  1. Bake on a griddle like buckwheat cakes.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Forms the body of the batter and soaks up the milk to become soft and thick.
Milk
Softens the bread and loosens the mixture so it can be strained and combined.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during cooking to give the cakes structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown on the griddle.

The step that matters

Add enough bread to make a thick batter. Bread keeps absorbing liquid as it sits, and the eggs need a sturdy base to set. A batter that is too thin spreads and cooks unevenly, while one that is too thick stays dense and may not cook through.

“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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