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Breakfast

Breakfast — Flannel Cakes, Broiled Ham, Stuffed Eggs

A breakfast of flannel cakes, broiled ham, and stuffed eggs.

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 ↓

Breakfast — Flannel Cakes, Broiled Ham, Stuffed Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Add milk and eggs, whisk until smooth.

Cook

  1. Heat a skillet and melt butter.

  2. Pour batter to form pancakes, cook until golden on both sides.

  3. Broil ham until heated through.

  4. Hard boil eggs, slice in half, and fill with yolk mixture.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter together as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cakes rise and turn light.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and set as the cakes and filling cook.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and gives the batter a tender, moist texture.
Butter
Adds fat for flavor and helps the cakes brown in the skillet.

The step that matters

Cook the pancakes until golden on both sides. Cooking over steady heat lets the surface brown while the centre sets. Too hot and the outside burns before the inside cooks through; too cool and the cakes turn pale and soggy.

“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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