Name: Wholemeal Batter
Ingredients: 2 oz wholemeal (about ½ cup); ½ cup milk; 1 egg; seasoning to taste

Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Wholemeal Batter

Ingredients

2 oz wholemeal (about ½ cup)
½ cup milk
1 egg
seasoning to taste

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

Butter a flat tin or small pie dish.

Make and bake

In a bowl, combine wholemeal, milk, egg, and seasoning to make a batter.
Pour the batter into the prepared dish.
Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 to 30 minutes.

Serve

Serve with vegetables.

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.

Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Wholemeal: Provides the main body and structure of the cake as it sets in the oven.
Egg: Binds the batter and helps it set firm as it bakes.
Milk: Adds moisture so the batter mixes smoothly and bakes through.

“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.