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Bread Batter Cakes

A batter made from soaked dry bread, sour milk, eggs, baking soda, and salt, cooked on a griddle to form cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Bread Batter Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Crumble the dry white bread into a bowl.

  2. Pour the hot water over the bread and let it soak.

  3. Pass the soaked bread through a colander to remove excess water.

Make the batter

  1. In a mixing bowl, combine the soaked bread, sour milk, eggs, baking soda, salt, and enough flour to form a batter.

Cook

  1. Preheat a griddle over medium-high heat.

  2. Pour batter onto the griddle.

  3. Cook until golden brown 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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, 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. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Milk and flour 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

Dry white bread
Forms the body of the pancake, soaked to become soft and tender.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during cooking.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lightens the pancakes.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it holds together on the griddle.

The step that matters

Squeezing out excess water after soaking. Too much water left in the soaked bread thins the batter and weakens its structure, so the pancakes may spread or turn out gummy. Draining the bread through a colander keeps the batter thick enough to hold its shape.

“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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