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Stale-bread Griddle Cakes

A griddle cake made by soaking stale bread in hot milk, mixing with eggs, flour, butter, and leavening, then cooking on a hot griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stale-bread Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Soak the bread in the hot milk for 1 hour.

  2. Beat the soaked bread smooth.

  3. Beat the eggs, separating the whites and yolks, until very light.

  4. Add the yolks to the bread mixture.

  5. Mix in the flour, melted butter, and salt.

  6. Beat again.

  7. Add the baking powder and the beaten egg whites.

Cook

  1. Bake quickly on a hot griddle greased with fat from salt pork.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter, and whipped whites lighten it and help the cakes rise.
Stale bread-crumbs
Soaked in hot milk, they thicken the batter and give the cakes a soft body.
Milk
Hydrates the bread so it breaks down into a smooth, moist batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, so the cakes puff and rise on the griddle.
Flour
Adds structure so the thin batter holds together as it cooks.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavor in the finished cakes.

The step that matters

Add the baking powder and beaten egg whites. Baking powder gas and whipped whites are the lift, so they should be folded in gently and cooked soon after. Overbeating or waiting lets the air and gas escape, leaving flat, dense cakes.

“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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