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Griddle Cakes

A griddle cake made from stale bread, milk, eggs, flour, and butter, baked on a hot griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Griddle Cakes

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Griddle Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Soak the stale bread in rich milk for about an hour.

  2. Mash the soaked bread and milk into a paste.

  3. Add sugar, salt, melted butter, and beaten eggs to the mixture.

  4. Sift flour and baking soda into the mixture and stir well.

  5. Finally, add sour milk and mix until combined.

Cook

  1. Bake on a hot 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Butter and flour 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

Stale bread
Soaked and mashed, it thickens the batter and gives the cakes a soft, tender crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during cooking, adding structure and richness.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cakes together as they cook.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acidity to produce gas, helping the cakes rise and lighten.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds a slight tang to the batter.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness, tenderness, and browning on the griddle.

The step that matters

Add sour milk last and mix until combined. Baking soda starts reacting as soon as it meets acid. Adding the sour milk last and mixing just until combined keeps the batter's gas bubbles intact, so the cakes rise evenly instead of going flat or tough from overmixing.

“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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