Name: Sour Milk or Buttermilk Cakes
Ingredients: 1 quart sour milk or buttermilk; 1 teaspoon salt; 2 eggs, beaten separately; 1 teaspoon baking soda, dissolved in a little hot water; Flour, enough to make a thin batter

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 ↓

Sour Milk or Buttermilk Cakes

Ingredients

1 quart sour milk or buttermilk
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs, beaten separately
1 teaspoon baking soda, dissolved in a little hot water
Flour, enough to make a thin batter

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

In a bowl, combine sour milk or buttermilk, salt, and the dissolved baking soda.
Add flour gradually until you achieve a thin batter consistency.
Beat the batter vigorously for 10 minutes.
Fold in the beaten egg whites until well combined.

Bake

Bake immediately in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) 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.

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).
Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

Sour milk or buttermilk: Provides the liquid and acidity that reacts with the baking soda to lift the batter.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acid in the sour milk or buttermilk to release gas, making the cakes rise.
Eggs: Add structure and richness, and the whipped whites help trap air for lightness.
Flour: Forms the structure of the cakes as the batter sets in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake immediately. Baking soda reacts with the acid in the milk as soon as it is mixed, and the gas it releases escapes over time. Waiting lets the batter lose its lift, so the cakes can turn out flat and dense.

“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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Sour Milk or Buttermilk Cakes