Name: Bread Crumb Griddles
Ingredients: 1 pint warm sweet milk; 2 cups stale bread crumbs; 2 eggs; 1 cup flour; 2 teaspoons cream of tartar; 1 teaspoon baking soda

Why it works: Milk and bread 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 Crumb Griddles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

Pour warm sweet milk over stale bread crumbs.
Add eggs and let the mixture stand for 15 minutes.
Stir in flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda. Mix well.

Cook

Fry in a 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.

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.

Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 crumbs: Soak up the warm milk to form the body of the batter.
Eggs: Add structure and binding so the griddles hold together.
Flour: Provides starch and gluten that give the griddles their structure.
Cream of tartar: Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda to lift the griddles.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that makes the griddles rise.

“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.