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Breakfast

Sour Milk Griddle-cakes

A batter of sour milk, flour, eggs, and baking soda cooked on a griddle to make pancakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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. Combine sour milk and enough sifted flour in a bowl to create a thick batter that runs from the dish.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, salt, melted butter, and dissolved baking soda to the batter.

Cook

  1. Preheat a well-greased griddle over high heat.

  2. Pour batter onto the griddle, cooking until browned on both sides.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce gas that lightens the pancakes.
Sifted flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter into a cooked pancake.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set on the griddle.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acid to leaven the batter and aid browning.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor and helps the pancakes brown.

The step that matters

Pour batter onto the griddle, cooking until browned on both sides. The griddle must be hot and well greased before pouring. Batter poured onto a cool or dry surface sticks and spreads, while the leavening gas from the soda and sour milk escapes if the batter sits too long before cooking.

“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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