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Breakfast

Breakfast Griddle Cakes

A batter of sour milk, egg, butter, baking powder, salt, and flour is cooked on a griddle to make breakfast cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Dissolve the baking powder in a little hot water.

  2. Gradually add the baking powder to the sour milk while stirring until frothy.

  3. Add the beaten egg, butter, and salt.

  4. Mix in enough flour to achieve a thick batter.

Cook and serve

  1. Bake one cake on a griddle.

  2. Serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Provides moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking powder to lift the cakes.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, binding the batter as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavour.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, causing the cakes to rise and become light.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cakes as its proteins set during cooking.

The step that matters

Mix in the flour until just combined. Stirring flour into liquid develops gluten. Over-mixing makes the batter elastic, which produces tough, dense cakes instead of tender ones.

“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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