Skip to main content
Dessert

Crumb Pancakes

A pancake made from soaked stale bread, buttermilk, baking soda, salt, eggs, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Buttermilk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Crumb Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Soak stale light bread or part biscuit in buttermilk overnight.

  2. In the morning, strain through a colander or rub until very smooth.

  3. Add baking soda, coarse sea salt, beaten eggs, and enough flour to make a medium thick batter.

Cook

  1. Bake on hot griddles.

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. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Bread + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Buttermilk + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,986 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Stale bread or biscuit
Provides body and a soft, tender crumb as it soaks up the buttermilk.
Buttermilk
Softens the bread and adds tang that balances the sweetness of the dish.
Baking soda
Reacts with the buttermilk's acidity to produce gas that helps the pancakes rise.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the pancakes.
Flour
Gives the batter enough body to hold its shape on the griddle.

The step that matters

Straining or rubbing the soaked bread until very smooth. Lumps of bread left in the batter will not blend into the mix and can leave dense, uneven pockets in the pancakes. A smooth batter cooks more evenly and gives a consistent texture.

“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.

More crumb pancakes recipes

Bread 13

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesBrown Bread PuddingBrown Bread Pudding47 recipes