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Dessert

Rye Batter Cakes

A simple batter cake made with rye flour, eggs, milk, sugar, salt, baking powder, and white flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rye and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,320 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rye Batter Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs until light.

  2. Add the milk to the eggs.

  3. Sift together the rye flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder.

  4. Add the dry ingredients to the egg mixture.

  5. Beat the mixture well.

Cook

  1. Bake on a lightly greased griddle.

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. Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + ryetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together918 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set on the griddle.
Rye flour
Forms the body of the cakes, giving a darker, earthier flavour and a denser crumb than wheat.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cakes rise and become light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and provides moisture and tenderness in the batter.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture well. Thorough beating combines the dry and wet ingredients evenly and develops gluten in the wheat flour, so the batter is smooth and the cakes rise evenly. Rye flour has little gluten, so overbeating is less of a risk here than with wheat.

“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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