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Mrs. Bleecker's Waffles

A batter of milk, butter, lard, eggs, flour, soda, and salt baked in a waffle iron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Mrs. Bleecker's Waffles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the milk, butter, lard, and eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add enough flour to create a stiff batter.

  3. If using sour milk, add soda to cover a five-cent piece; if using fresh milk, add 1 teaspoon of soda.

  4. Stir in 1 teaspoon of salt.

Bake

  1. Bake the batter in a waffle iron as quickly as possible.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the iron.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the waffle together once baked.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and supplies moisture that turns to steam for lightness.
Butter
Adds fat for flavor and tenderness and helps the waffle brown.
Soda
Reacts with the acidity of sour milk to release gas that lightens the batter.

The step that matters

Bake the batter in a waffle iron as quickly as possible.. Once soda is added, its leavening reaction begins and gas escapes over time, so a delay before baking can leave the waffles 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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