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Breakfast

Delicious Whole Wheat Pan Cakes

A thin batter of whole wheat flour, salt, baking soda, and buttermilk cooked on a greased griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and buttermilk 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 ↓

Delicious Whole Wheat Pan Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine whole wheat flour, salt, and baking soda.

  2. Gradually add buttermilk until you achieve a rather thin batter.

Cook the pancakes

  1. Preheat a greased griddle over medium-high heat.

  2. Pour batter onto the griddle.

  3. Cook until bubbles form.

  4. Flip and cook until golden.

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. Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Wheat + buttermilktop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together226 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Whole wheat flour
Provides the main structure of the pancake and its nutty, hearty flavour.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in buttermilk to release gas, helping the pancakes rise and lighten.
Buttermilk
Hydrates the flour to form the batter and adds tang that pairs with the baking soda.

The step that matters

Cook until bubbles form before flipping. Bubbles rising through the batter show that the surface has set enough to hold its shape. Flipping too early can tear the pancake and leave the centre raw, because the batter has not yet firmed up.

“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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