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Stale-bread Griddle Cakes

A batter of soaked stale bread, milk, eggs, flour, and leavening, cooked quickly on a greased griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stale-bread Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Soak the bread in the hot milk for 1 hour.

  2. Beat the soaked bread smooth.

  3. Separate the eggs and beat the whites and yolks until very light.

  4. Add the yolks to the bread mixture.

  5. Mix in the flour, melted butter, and salt.

  6. Beat the batter again.

Cook

  1. Add the baking powder and the beaten egg whites.

  2. Grease a hot griddle with fat.

  3. Bake the batter quickly on the greased griddle.

  4. Stir the bread-crumbs into the batter just before baking.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter, and whipped whites add air that lightens the cakes.
Stale bread-crumbs
Soak up the hot milk to form a soft, moist body for the batter.
Flour
Provides structure that holds the cakes together as they set on the griddle.
Baking powder
Releases gas when moistened and heated, causing the cakes to rise.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavour and browning on the griddle.
Milk
Softens the bread and supplies the liquid that makes the batter pourable.

The step that matters

Bake the batter quickly after adding the baking powder and egg whites. Baking powder starts releasing gas as soon as it is wet, and whipped egg whites trap air that expands with heat. If the batter stands before baking, much of that lift is lost, so the cakes turn out flatter and denser.

“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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