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Dessert

Buttermilk Breakfast Cakes

A quick baked cake made with Graham flour, butter, salt, baking soda, and buttermilk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and buttermilk 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 ↓

Buttermilk Breakfast Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make and bake the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the Graham flour, butter, salt, and baking soda.

  2. Add enough buttermilk to achieve a cupcake batter consistency.

  3. Drop the batter by large spoonfuls onto a buttered baking pan.

  4. Bake for 15 minutes until puffed and 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.

  1. Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + buttermilktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,674 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Graham flour
Provides the bulk and structure of the cakes.
Buttermilk
Moistens the flour and its acidity helps the baking soda react.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in buttermilk to produce gas that makes the cakes rise.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour, and helps the cakes brown.

The step that matters

Adding the buttermilk. The batter should reach cupcake batter consistency. Too little liquid makes dense cakes, and too much makes them spread thin. Mixing only until combined keeps them tender.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, buttermilk):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Hazelnutfits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, buttermilk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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