Skip to main content
Breakfast

Alice's Waffles

A batter made from sour milk, baking soda, cornmeal, lard, butter, sweet milk, eggs, and flour, baked into waffles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Alice's Waffles

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs separately.

  2. Combine sour milk, baking soda, cornmeal, lard, butter, and sweet milk.

  3. Add flour to create a thick pancake-like batter.

Shape and bake

  1. Handle the batter as little as possible to avoid toughness.

  2. Roll the batter lightly and flour both sides before baking.

  3. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

  4. Bake until golden brown.

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. Butter + flourtop 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).

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, helping the batter hold its shape while baking.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to produce rising and a tender crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to release gas that lightens the waffles.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets the thick, pancake-like batter as it bakes.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and keeps the waffles from drying out.
Butter
Adds fat for flavor and tenderness, and helps the surface brown.

The step that matters

Handle the batter as little as possible. Stirring or handling flour-based batter develops gluten, which makes the waffles tough and chewy. Mixing gently and only until combined keeps the texture light.

“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.

More waffles recipes

Rice 92German 18Hominy 16Raised 16Flemish 12Newport 11 See all 105 →

You might also like

Rice GruelRice Gruel28 recipesPeptoned Milk GruelPeptoned Milk Gruel9 recipes