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Recipe for Griddle Cakes

A quick batter of flour, salt, baking soda, sour milk, and egg cooked on a hot griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Recipe for Griddle Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the griddle until hot.

  2. Sift together the flour, salt, and baking soda.

  3. Beat the egg well.

Make the batter

  1. Stir the milk into the flour mixture.

  2. Add the beaten egg. Mix until well combined.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour spoonfuls of batter onto the hot greased griddle.

  2. Flip the cakes with a broad knife.

  3. Brown the other side.

  4. Serve immediately on a hot plate.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 structure that holds the cakes together as they cook.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to release gas, making the cakes rise and turn light.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds moisture to the batter.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds richness and structure to the cakes.

The step that matters

Pour spoonfuls onto a hot, greased griddle. If the griddle is not hot enough, the cakes spread and cook slowly without browning well. Batter that hits the surface at the right temperature sets quickly, holding its shape and browning evenly.

“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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