Skip to main content
Dessert

Sweet Milk Batter Cakes

A simple batter cake made from flour, baking powder, salt, butter, egg, and milk, cooked on a skillet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Sweet Milk Batter Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg and melt the butter, then combine with the dry ingredients.

  3. Add milk gradually until the batter reaches a pourable consistency.

Cook

  1. Cook on a greased skillet over medium heat until golden brown on both sides.

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. Butter + milktop 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the cakes their structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cakes rise and become light.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps set the cakes as they cook.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and contributes richness and browning.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and loosens the batter to a pourable consistency.

The step that matters

Cook over medium heat until golden on both sides. Medium heat lets the centre set through before the outside browns too quickly. Browning comes from Maillard reactions, which speed up at high heat and can scorch the surface while the inside stays raw.

“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.

More milk cakes recipes

Sour 6 See all 9 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes