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Dessert

Batter Cakes

A simple batter cake made with eggs, milk, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Batter Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs well in a bowl.

  2. Add the milk and mix until combined.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and salt.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until smooth.

  5. Leave out the cream of tartar until you are ready to bake.

Cook

  1. Preheat your griddle or frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Pour batter onto the griddle and 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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 as they set when cooked.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets the batter into a cake as it cooks.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid so the flour hydrates and the cakes stay soft.
Baking soda
Reacts with acid to release gas that lifts the batter and makes the cakes rise.
Cream of tartar
An acid that works with baking soda to release gas and helps the rise.

The step that matters

Stirring the dry ingredients into the wet. Stir only until the batter is smooth. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which makes cakes tough and chewy instead of tender.

“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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