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Excelsior Wheat Cakes

A batter of sour cream, sweet milk, salt, and flour cooked on a griddle into cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour 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 ↓

Excelsior Wheat Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine sour cream, sweet milk, and salt.

  2. Gradually add flour until you achieve a smooth batter.

Cook

  1. Preheat a griddle and pour batter to form cakes.

  2. 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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

Sour cream
Adds acidity and richness, giving the cakes a tender, moist crumb.
Sweet milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and forms the batter.
Flour
Provides structure as its starches set during cooking.

The step that matters

Cook until golden brown on both sides. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction between sugars and proteins at the surface. Cooking too briefly leaves the cakes pale and doughy inside, while too much heat burns the outside before the center sets.

“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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