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Bran Cakes

A batter of bran, water, egg, sour milk, baking soda, and cornmeal fried like pancakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Bran Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the bran

  1. Pour boiling water over the bran and let it stand overnight.

Make and cook the batter

  1. In the morning, add the egg, sour milk, and baking soda.

  2. Thicken the mixture with cornmeal.

  3. Fry the mixture like griddle 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. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Bran
Absorbs the boiling water and softens, giving the batter body and a coarse, fibrous texture.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps set the pancakes as they cook.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda and adds a tangy flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acid to release carbon dioxide, which lifts the batter.
Cornmeal
Thickens the batter so it holds its shape when fried.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda and frying promptly. Baking soda starts releasing gas as soon as it meets the acid in the sour milk. Cooking the batter soon after mixing keeps that gas in the batter, so the pancakes rise rather than falling flat.

“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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