Name: Sour Milk Griddle Cakes
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon stale bread or 2 tablespoons flour; 1/16 teaspoon baking soda; 1 tablespoon boiling water; Salt to taste; 2 tablespoons sour milk; 4 teaspoons sugar; 1 teaspoon melted butter

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 ↓

Sour Milk Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

Soak the stale bread in boiling water until soft, then beat until smooth.
Add the sour milk to the mixture.
In a separate bowl, combine the dry ingredients: flour, baking soda, and salt.
Mix the wet and dry ingredients together, then add the melted butter and beat thoroughly.

Cook

Cook on a hot griddle 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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together77,875 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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: Reacts with the baking soda to produce gas, helping the pancakes rise and turn light.
Baking soda: Neutralizes the acidity of the sour milk and releases carbon dioxide for lift.
Flour: Provides the starch and gluten structure that holds the pancakes together.
Melted butter: Adds fat for tenderness, richness and flavor, and helps browning on the griddle.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown through caramelization.

The step that matters

Cook on a hot griddle until golden brown. The batter's gas from baking soda and sour milk escapes quickly, so the griddle must be hot enough to set the batter fast. Too cool a surface lets the pancakes spread and go flat, and too long a cook can dry or scorch them.

“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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Sour Milk Griddle Cakes