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Dessert

Flannel Cakes

Flannel cakes are batter cakes made with flour, brown sugar, baking powder, salt, eggs, and milk, cooked on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Flannel Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Sift together flour, brown sugar, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Add beaten eggs and milk; mix until smooth.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour batter onto a hot griddle and cook until rich brown.

  2. Serve with maple syrup.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the cakes as its starch sets when cooked.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the cakes.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and gives the batter its pourable texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cakes rise and become light.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and promotes browning on the griddle surface.

The step that matters

Cook on a hot griddle until rich brown. Heat must be high enough to set the batter and brown the surface, but not so high that the outside burns before the centre cooks through. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction between sugars and proteins.

“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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