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Dessert

Flannel Cakes

Flannel cakes are a batter made with butter, milk, eggs, flour, salt, and yeast, baked on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Flannel Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Melt the butter in hot milk.

  2. Add cold milk, eggs, salt, and yeast.

  3. Stir in enough flour to make a stiff batter.

  4. Set the batter to rise in a warm place for about 3 hours.

Cook

  1. Butter a griddle and pour on the batter to form small 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour 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

Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the batter rise and giving the cakes a light, airy texture.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter hold its shape and set on the griddle.
Flour
Provides the starch and protein that form the body of the batter, keeping the cakes firm.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and tenderness, and helps the cakes brown on the griddle.
Milk
Supplies liquid that hydrates the flour and adds softness and flavour to the batter.

The step that matters

Set the batter to rise in a warm place. Yeast needs warmth to ferment steadily. If the batter is too cold it rises slowly and the cakes come out dense; if it is too hot the yeast can over-work and the batter may sour or collapse.

“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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