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 ↓
Waffles
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
Beat the eggs separately.
In a bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar.
Add the beaten eggs and milk to the dry ingredients.
Mix until you have a thick batter.
Cook and serve
Cook in a waffle iron until golden brown.
Serve hot with sugar sprinkled on top.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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
- Eggs
- Add structure and richness to the batter as they set during cooking.
- Flour
- Forms the main structure of the batter once its starches set in the iron.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas when heated, lifting the batter so the waffles rise and stay light.
- Milk
- Adds moisture to the batter and helps it brown through milk sugars and proteins.
- Butter
- Adds fat for tenderness and flavour, and helps the waffles brown in the iron.
The step that matters
Cook in a waffle iron until golden brown. Browning depends on heat and time: too little and the waffles stay pale and soft, too long and they dry out and scorch. Cooking until golden gives crisp edges and a set interior.
“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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