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Dessert

Quick Flannel-cakes

Flannel cakes are a quick pancake-like batter made with flour, milk, eggs, butter, salt, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Quick Flannel-cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the butter into the flour with your hands until evenly mixed. Mix in the salt.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks and add them to the milk.

  3. Combine the milk mixture with the flour and beat until smooth.

Cook

  1. Fold in the beaten egg whites and baking powder.

  2. Grease a hot griddle with a piece of fat salt pork and bake the batter quickly.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter, while whipped whites lighten it and help it rise.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, making the cakes rise and turn light and airy.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour, it adds richness and tenderness to the cakes.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together as they cook.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and gives the batter its liquid body and moistness.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites and baking powder. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the egg whites. Overmixing deflates the batter, so the cakes rise less and turn out 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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