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Sour Milk Griddle Cakes

A batter of sour milk, flour, sugar, eggs, and butter cooked on a griddle to make pancakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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, mix sour milk with baking soda and salt.

  2. Add flour and sugar, then mix until smooth.

  3. Beat in eggs and melted butter until well combined.

Cook

  1. Heat a griddle over medium heat and grease lightly.

  2. Pour batter onto the griddle and cook until bubbles form, then flip and cook until golden brown.

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 + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce gas that makes the pancakes rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk to release carbon dioxide, leavening the batter.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the pancakes hold together while cooking.
Flour
Provides the main structure of the pancakes as its starches set during cooking.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, and helps browning on the griddle.

The step that matters

Cooking on the griddle. Cook over medium heat so the bubbles set before the surface browns. Too hot a griddle scorches the outside while the centre stays raw; too cool, the pancakes turn pale and tough.

“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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