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Bread Cakes

Bread cakes are made by soaking dry bread in buttermilk, mixing with egg, baking soda, flour, and cooking on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Bread Cakes

Why it works: Buttermilk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Bread Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soak

  1. Pour buttermilk over pieces of dry bread and let it stand overnight.

Make the batter

  1. In the morning, beat the mixture with a spoon until fine.

  2. Add the beaten egg, salt, and baking soda.

  3. Mix in enough flour to create a nice batter.

Cook

  1. Bake on a griddle like pancakes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Bread + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Buttermilk + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,986 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Buttermilk
Softens the dry bread and adds acidity that reacts with the baking soda.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as the cakes set.
Baking soda
Reacts with the buttermilk's acidity to release gas, helping the cakes rise.
Flour
Provides the main structure so the batter holds together when cooked.

The step that matters

Beating the soaked bread until fine. Bread that stays in lumps leaves uneven pockets and weak spots in the batter. Breaking it down fully gives a smooth batter that cooks evenly and sets into a uniform texture.

“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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