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Dessert

Flannel Cakes

Flannel Cakes are yeast‑leavened pancakes made with sweet and cold milk, eggs, butter, potato yeast, flour, and folded egg whites.

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 ↓

Flannel Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Heat 1 pint of sweet milk in a saucepan.

  2. Add 2 heaping tablespoons of butter and let it melt.

  3. Stir in 1 pint of cold milk and the well-beaten yolks of 4 eggs.

  4. Add 1 teaspoon of salt and 4 tablespoons of potato yeast.

  5. Mix in enough flour to create a stiff batter.

  6. Set the batter in a warm place to rise for 3 hours or overnight.

Cook

  1. Before baking, fold in the beaten egg whites.

  2. Fry the batter on a griddle like regular pancakes.

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. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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 egg whites folded in add lightness and help the cakes stay tender.
Potato yeast
Ferments the batter during the long rise, producing gas that leavens the cakes.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the stiff batter together as it rises and cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb, and helps the cakes brown on the griddle.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites hold air only if beaten stiffly and folded in gently just before cooking; deflating them or letting the batter sit too long after folding loses the lift they provide.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, egg, flour):

  1. Chivefits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, egg, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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