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Dessert

Sour Milk Griddle Cakes

A griddle cake made with sour milk, flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, sugar, stale bread crumbs, egg, and melted butter.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix and sift the dry ingredients.

  2. Cover the bread crumbs with boiling water, let stand until soft, then drain off excess water.

  3. Beat the bread crumbs until smooth.

  4. Add the flour.

Mix and cook

  1. Add the beaten egg, sour milk, and melted butter, and mix as little as possible.

  2. Bake on a greased hot griddle, turning only once while baking.

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

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the griddle cakes together.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cakes rise and become light.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acidity to produce gas for rising and tender texture.
Stale bread crumbs
Soaked soft and beaten in, adding moisture and a tender crumb.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds richness and structure as it sets.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and contributes moisture and tang.

The step that matters

Mix as little as possible. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which makes griddle cakes tough and chewy instead of tender. Stirring just until combined keeps the batter light.

“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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