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Sour Milk Griddle-Cakes

Sour milk pancakes made by mixing sour milk, flour, salt, baking soda, and egg, then cooking on a greased griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Sour Milk Griddle-Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix and sift the flour, salt, and baking soda.

  2. Add the sour milk and the beaten egg, mixing well.

Cook the pancakes

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto a greased hot griddle.

  2. Cook until puffed, full of bubbles, and edges are cooked, then turn and cook the other side.

Serve

  1. Serve with butter and maple syrup.

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. 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).

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 milk
Provides moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda to lift the batter.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the pancakes together as they set.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness to the pancakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to release gas that makes the pancakes rise.

The step that matters

Turn when bubbles form and edges are set. Flipping too early tears the pancake and leaves the centre raw. Waiting until bubbles break through the surface and the edges look cooked lets the structure set so the other side cooks through.

“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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