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Soda Griddle-cakes

A quick batter of milk, soda, and flour cooked on a butter‑greased griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Soda Griddle-cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine milk, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

  2. Add flour gradually until you achieve a batter that is not very thick.

Cook and serve

  1. Preheat a griddle and grease it with butter.

  2. Pour batter onto the griddle and fry quickly until golden brown.

  3. For tea, spread a little butter, nutmeg, and sugar on top before serving.

  4. For breakfast, serve plain.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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

Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and forms the batter.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with the baking soda to produce rising gas.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to release carbon dioxide, lightening the pancakes.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets as the pancakes cook.

The step that matters

Pour batter onto the griddle and fry quickly. The acid and baking soda start releasing gas as soon as they are mixed, so the batter should go onto a hot griddle without long waiting to keep the rise. Frying quickly keeps the pancakes light and gives an even golden browning.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cream, flour, butter, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, flour, butter, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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