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Sour Milk Pancakes

Sour Milk Pancakes are made by mixing sour milk, eggs, lard, flour, and baking soda, then frying in butter and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Sour Milk Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Dissolve the baking soda in the sour milk.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, lard, and salt.

  3. Stir in enough flour to create a batter.

Fry

  1. Fry the pancakes in a mixture of butter and lard.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk to produce gas, helping the pancakes rise and turn light.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds tang while moistening the batter.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter bind and set when fried.
Lard
Adds fat for tenderness and helps keep the pancakes from sticking to the pan.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pancakes together as they cook.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in the sour milk. Baking soda needs an acid to react and release carbon dioxide. Dissolving it fully in the sour milk before adding other ingredients spreads the reaction evenly, so the pancakes rise uniformly rather than in patches.

“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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