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Sour Milk Griddle Cakes

A griddle cake made with sour milk, baking soda, butter, sugar, salt, egg, flour, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sour Milk Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix sour milk and baking soda.

  2. Cream together butter and sugar, then add to the milk mixture.

  3. Stir in the salt, beaten egg, flour, and baking powder until combined.

Cook

  1. Heat a griddle and pour batter to form cakes.

  2. Cook until bubbles form, then flip and cook until golden brown.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce gas that lightens the pancakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk to produce carbon dioxide, helping the cakes rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pancakes together as they set.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping the batter bind and set on the griddle.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, and browns on the griddle.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown well.

The step that matters

Cook until bubbles form, then flip. Bubbles form as gas expands and escapes through the top surface. Flipping too early tears the unset batter, while waiting until bubbles break and the edges look set gives a fluffy, evenly browned cake.

“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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