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Breakfast Cake

A batter of eggs, milk, butter, salt, yeast, and flour cooked like pancakes.

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 ↓

Breakfast Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs separately.

  2. Stir in the milk, melted butter, salt, and yeast.

  3. Add enough flour to create a thick batter.

Rest and cook

  1. Prepare the batter late at night.

  2. Cook the batter in the morning like buckwheat pancakes.

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
Add structure and richness to the batter as they set during cooking.
Yeast
Produces gas that leavens the batter so it rises and becomes light.
Flour
Forms the gluten and starch network that gives the batter its body.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid that hydrates the flour and helps form the batter.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the finished cake.

The step that matters

Prepare the batter late at night. Yeast needs time to ferment the batter before cooking. Letting it rest overnight allows gas production and rising, so the cake turns out 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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