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Bread

Bread Cakes

A batter of soaked stale bread, flour, eggs, lard, butter, baking powder, and milk, cooked on a greased griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Bread Cakes

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 ↓

Bread Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Soak the stale bread in sweet milk for 30 minutes.

  2. Add the well-beaten egg yolks and flour alternately, adjusting with more milk if too stiff.

  3. Beat until the bread and flour are thoroughly mixed.

  4. Melt the lard and butter, stir in, and add salt to taste.

  5. Sift in the baking powder.

  6. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them in slowly.

Cook

  1. Heat a greased griddle and pour the batter to cook.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, 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

Stale bread
Soaked in milk, it softens and breaks down into the batter, adding body and moisture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together as they cook.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and binding, while whipped whites lighten the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cakes rise and become light.
Lard and butter
Add fat for tenderness and flavour, and help the cakes brown on the griddle.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites beaten until stiff hold air that gives the cakes lightness. Folding them in slowly keeps that air from collapsing, so the batter stays light rather than dense.

“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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