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Dessert

Feather Griddle Cakes

A simple griddle cake made with milk, egg, flour, baking powder, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Feather Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the milk, egg, flour, and baking powder.

  2. Melt the butter and add it to the mixture.

  3. Stir until smooth.

Cook the cakes

  1. Heat a griddle over medium heat and pour batter to form cakes.

  2. Cook until bubbles form, then flip and cook 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. 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

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cakes together as they cook.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness to the cakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it heats, helping the cakes rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, and helps browning on the griddle.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and gives the batter its liquid and moisture.

The step that matters

Cook until bubbles form, then flip. Bubbles appearing on the surface show the batter has set enough to flip. Flipping too early tears the cake and leaves the centre raw, while waiting too long can dry it out.

“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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