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Dessert

Spider-Cakes

Spider Cakes are thin pancakes made from prepared flour and milk or water, cooked in a greased pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,386 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Spider-Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat a frying pan and a cover until hot.

  2. Mix the prepared flour with the milk or water.

  3. Grease the hot pan with pork, lard, or butter.

Cook the cakes

  1. Pour half of the mixture into the pan and smooth it with a spoon.

  2. Cover and cook for 4 minutes.

  3. Turn the cake and cook for another 4 minutes.

  4. Remove the cake, grease the pan again, and repeat with the remaining mixture.

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 + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + porktop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Prepared flour
Forms the batter's structure, which sets into the body of the cake as it cooks.
Milk or water
Hydrates the flour so it forms a pourable batter that cooks into a moist cake.

The step that matters

Cover and cook for 4 minutes. The covered pan traps heat and steam so the top sets while the base browns. Cooking too long before turning can scorch the bottom while the centre stays wet.

“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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