Name: Mrs. Bleecker’s Waffles
Ingredients: 1 quart milk (preferably sour); 1 egg-sized piece of butter; 1 egg-sized piece of lard; 4 eggs; Flour (enough to make a stiff batter); 1 teaspoon baking soda (if milk is fresh); Coarse sea salt (¼ teaspoon, or to taste)

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 ↓

Mrs. Bleecker’s Waffles

Ingredients

1 quart milk (preferably sour)
1 egg-sized piece of butter
1 egg-sized piece of lard
4 eggs
Flour (enough to make a stiff batter)
1 teaspoon baking soda (if milk is fresh)
Coarse sea salt (¼ teaspoon, or to taste)

Directions

Make the batter

In a large bowl, mix the milk, butter, lard, and eggs until well combined.
Gradually add flour until the mixture forms a stiff batter.
If using sour milk, add enough baking soda to cover a five‑cent piece.
If using fresh milk, add 1 teaspoon of baking soda.
Add salt and mix well.

Bake

Bake the batter in a waffle iron as quickly as possible.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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: Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the waffles as they cook.
Flour: Provides the structure that holds the stiff batter together in the waffle iron.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acidity of sour milk to produce gas that lightens the waffles.
Milk: Adds moisture to the batter, and its acidity activates the baking soda when sour.

The step that matters

Bake the batter as quickly as possible. Baking soda starts releasing gas as soon as it meets the acidic sour milk, so delay lets the batter lose lift before it reaches the hot iron.

“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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Mrs. Bleecker’s Waffles