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Hotel Griddle Cakes

A simple batter of flour, sugar or syrup, butter, eggs, and salt cooked on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Hotel Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, sugar or syrup, melted butter, salt, and eggs. Mix until smooth to form a batter.

Cook

  1. Preheat a griddle or frying pan over medium heat and grease it well.

  2. Pour batter onto the hot griddle and cook until bubbles form on the surface.

  3. Flip and cook until golden brown on the other side.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the batter as its proteins set during cooking.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the cakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor and helps prevent sticking.
Sugar or syrup
Adds sweetness and promotes browning on the griddle surface.

The step that matters

Cooking on the griddle. The griddle must be hot enough and well greased before pouring the batter. If it is too cool, the cakes absorb grease and stick or cook unevenly, while too much heat browns the outside before the inside sets.

“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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