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Dessert

Griffin Batter Cake

A simple batter cake made with eggs, flour, milk, baking soda, tartaric acid, and salt, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk 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 ↓

Griffin Batter Cake

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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Beat eggs well.

  3. Grease baking tin lightly with fresh lard.

Make and bake

  1. Add flour, milk, baking soda, tartaric acid, and salt to eggs and mix until smooth.

  2. Pour batter into prepared tin and bake until golden.

  3. Serve cake hot.

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

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

Flour and milk 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
Provide structure and richness, helping the batter set as it bakes.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set in the oven.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a smooth, pourable batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Tartaric acid
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda to lift the cake.

The step that matters

Mix until smooth, then bake promptly. Baking soda and tartaric acid start releasing gas as soon as they are wet, so the batter should go into the hot oven without delay. Waiting lets the gas escape and reduces the rise.

“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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