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Whole Meal Bannocks

A quick fried or baked wholemeal dough with sultanas, sugar, butter, egg, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Whole Meal Bannocks

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. In a mixing bowl, combine the whole meal flour and butter, mixing well with your fingers.

  2. Add the sultanas and caster sugar to the mixture.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg and mix it with the milk.

  4. Combine the egg mixture with the flour mixture to form a light dough.

Shape and cook

  1. Flour your work surface, divide the dough into eight pieces, and roll each piece to about ¼ inch thick.

  2. Heat a frying pan over medium heat, place a bannock in the pan, and cook for about 1 minute on each side.

  3. Once cooked, cut open the bannock, butter it, and serve hot.

  4. To bake, shape the dough into smaller cakes about ½ inch thick, brush with milk, place on a baking sheet, and bake for 20 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Whole meal flour
Provides the structure of the dough and a hearty, nutty flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness by coating the flour and shortening the dough.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure as it sets.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form a dough and adds softness and browning.

The step that matters

Cooking the bannock on the pan. Medium heat lets the centre cook through before the outside browns too much. Rolling the pieces evenly to the same thickness ensures they all cook at the same rate.

“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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