Skip to main content
Dessert

Sour Milk Bran Batter Cakes

A cake made with sour milk, bran, flour, and leavening, baked on a greased griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sour Milk Bran Batter Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Beat the egg until light, then add the sour milk.

  2. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and sugar.

  3. Add the sifted mixture to the egg and milk mixture.

  4. Stir in the bran and mix until well combined.

Cook

  1. Bake on a slightly greased 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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness to the cakes.
Sour milk
Provides moisture and acidity that reacts with the leavening to lift the cakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce carbon dioxide for rising and browning.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cakes as its proteins set during cooking.
Baking powder
Adds extra leavening so the cakes rise and become light.
Bran
Adds texture and fiber-rich body to the batter, giving the cakes a more open crumb.

The step that matters

Cooking on the griddle. The griddle must be only slightly greased and at a steady heat. Too much grease or heat browns the outside before the leavening has lifted the batter, leaving the centre dense and raw. Cooking until golden brown lets the structure set through.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes