Skip to main content
Dessert

Sour Milk Griddle-cakes

Sour milk griddle-cakes are pancakes made with sour milk, sifted flour, eggs, salt, butter, baking soda, and a little milk or water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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. In a bowl, combine sour milk and enough sifted flour to create a thick batter that runs from the dish.

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

Cook the pancakes

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

  2. Pour batter onto the griddle in spoonfuls, cooking until bubbles form on the surface.

  3. Flip the cakes and cook 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 lifts the batter.
Sifted flour
Provides structure as it sets, giving the pancakes body and a tender crumb.
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 create carbon dioxide, causing the pancakes to rise.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, and helps the pancakes brown.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda and adding it to the acidic batter. Baking soda needs acid to release carbon dioxide, so it should be dissolved and mixed in promptly. Letting it sit too long can lose lift, and it must not be used without an acid such as sour milk.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes