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Sour Milk Griddle Cakes

Sour Milk Griddle Cakes are made from stale bread, flour, sour milk, and baked on a hot griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Sour Milk Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Break the bread into pieces and pour boiling water over it.

  2. Once soft, pour off any surplus water and beat until smooth.

Make the batter

  1. Add the sifted dry ingredients, then the beaten egg, sour milk, and melted butter.

  2. Beat thoroughly and bake on a greased hot griddle.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

Stale bread
Soaked in boiling water, it softens into a moist base that adds body to the batter.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets on the griddle.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cakes together.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity of the sour milk to produce gas that lifts the cakes.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds tang and tenderness.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness and helps the cakes brown on the griddle.

The step that matters

Baking on the griddle. The griddle must be greased and hot before batter goes on. If it is too cool, the cakes spread and absorb fat without setting. If too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks 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.

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