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Dessert

Flannel Cakes

Flannel cakes are a batter of Indian meal and flour, leavened with yeast, cooked on a griddle with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Flannel Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the Indian meal and flour together.

  2. Add enough tepid water to make a batter slightly thicker than for buckwheat cakes.

  3. Stir in the salt and yeast.

Rise and cook

  1. Set the mixture in a warm place to rise until light.

  2. Cook on a buttered griddle and serve hot.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Fine indian meal
Forms the main body of the cakes, giving them a coarse, grainy texture.
Flour
Adds structure to the batter so the cakes hold together when cooked.
Yeast
Ferments the batter so it rises and becomes light and airy.
Butter
Greases the griddle and browns the surface of the cakes.

The step that matters

Letting the batter rise until light. Yeast needs time in a warm place to ferment and produce gas. If the batter is not risen enough, the cakes will be dense rather than light.

“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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