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Bread Griddle Cakes

A batter made from soaked bread crumbs, flour, cornmeal, molasses, and eggs, cooked on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Bread Griddle Cakes

Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Bread Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soaked bread

  1. Soak bread crumbs in sour milk overnight, enough to cover them.

  2. In the morning, beat the soaked bread crumbs until light.

Make the batter

  1. Add flour, cornmeal, molasses, salt, baking soda, and sweet milk to achieve the right consistency.

  2. In a separate bowl, rub soaked stale bread through a colander.

  3. To the bread, add egg yolks, salt, baking soda, sugar, and enough flour to make a batter slightly thicker than for buckwheat cakes.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

Cook

  1. Bake on a 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.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Bread crumbs
Provide bulk and moisture, giving the cakes a soft, tender crumb.
Sour milk
Adds acidity that tenderizes the crumb and reacts with baking soda to help lift the batter.
Flour
Provides structure that holds the cakes together while they cook.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that makes the cakes rise.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter while adding tenderness.
Egg whites
Beaten whites trap air that lightens the batter and helps the cakes rise.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Beaten egg whites hold air that lifts the batter. Stirring them vigorously or overmixing deflates that foam, so the cakes come out denser. Fold gently with a spatula until just combined.

“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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