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Sour Milk Griddle Cakes

A griddle cake made with sour milk, flour, salt, baking soda, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk 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 Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix and sift the dry ingredients.

  2. Add the sour milk and the well-beaten egg.

  3. Cook according to general directions for griddle cakes.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Flour and milk 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

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the griddle cakes together.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity, and its acid reacts with the baking soda to lift the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to produce gas that makes the cakes rise.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds richness and structure as it sets on the griddle.

The step that matters

Cook the batter soon after adding the liquids. Baking soda starts reacting with the acid in the sour milk as soon as it is wet. The gas it releases is what lifts the cakes, so waiting long before cooking can leave them flatter and denser.

“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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