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Old-fashioned Flapjacks

A batter of milk, cream or butter, egg, baking soda, and flour is fried into cakes, then buttered, sugared, and optionally layered with dried apples.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Old-fashioned Flapjacks

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine sour milk, cream or butter, egg, and baking soda.

  2. Add flour until the batter is thick enough to drop from a spoon.

Cook and stack

  1. Heat a skillet and pour in batter to form cakes the size of tea plates and ½ inch thick.

  2. Fry until golden brown on both sides.

  3. Spread melted butter on each flapjack, sprinkle with sugar and nutmeg, and layer with dried apples if desired.

  4. Continue stacking flapjacks until all batter is used.

  5. Cut into pie-shaped wedges to serve.

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. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk to leaven the flapjacks so they rise and turn light.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure so the cakes hold together when flipped.
Flour
Provides the starch and protein that set the batter into sturdy, cooked cakes.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the outside brown in the skillet and flavours the stacked cakes.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown on both sides. The batter must be cooked through as well as browned. Over-high heat browns the outside before the centre sets, leaving raw batter inside, while the leavening gas is released by heat and is best trapped while the batter is still being cooked evenly.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, egg, flour, butter, sugar, nutmeg. 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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