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Sour Milk Griddle Cakes

Griddle cakes made from clabbered or sour milk, egg, baking soda, melted butter and flour, cooked on a hot griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Sour Milk Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the clabbered milk, egg, salt, baking soda, and melted butter.

  2. Gradually add flour until you achieve a stiff batter.

Cook

  1. Preheat a griddle until smoking hot.

  2. Pour batter onto the griddle and cook until golden brown on both sides.

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. 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. Egg + buttertop 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

Clabbered milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce gas, helping the pancakes rise.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as the pancakes set.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acidity to release carbon dioxide for lift and tenderness.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten and starch structure that holds the pancakes together.
Melted butter
Adds fat for flavour and a tender texture, and helps browning.

The step that matters

Adding the flour. Flour should be added gradually so the batter reaches a stiff but smooth consistency. Overmixing develops too much gluten, which can make pancakes tough, while too little flour leaves a thin batter that spreads and cooks unevenly.

“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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