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Dessert

Bread Crumb Batter-cakes

A quick batter cake made with bread crumbs, flour, egg, lard, buttermilk, and baking soda, cooked in a skillet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and buttermilk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Bread Crumb Batter-cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the bread crumbs and flour.

  2. Add the egg, lard, buttermilk, and baking soda, then mix until smooth and well combined.

Cook the cakes

  1. Heat a skillet over medium heat and grease lightly.

  2. Pour batter onto the skillet to form cakes and cook 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. Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Bread + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttermilktop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,986 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 the bulk and a tender, absorbent base for the cakes.
All-purpose flour
Adds structure so the batter holds together when poured onto the skillet.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps hold the cakes together while they cook.
Buttermilk
Adds moisture and tang, and reacts with baking soda to help the cakes rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce gas that lightens the cakes.
Lard
Adds fat for richness and helps the cakes brown in the skillet.

The step that matters

Cook the cakes until golden brown on both sides. Medium heat lets the centres cook through before the outside browns too quickly. Flipping only once the edges set keeps the cakes from tearing. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction on the surface.

“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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