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Bread Pancakes

Bread pancakes are made from soaked bread crumbs, milk, eggs, flour, sugar, salt, and optional baking soda and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Bread Pancakes

Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Bread Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soaked crumbs

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in warm milk overnight.

  2. In the morning, mash the soaked crumbs until fine and strain through a sieve.

Make the batter

  1. Add the beaten eggs, flour, sugar, salt, and nutmeg to the mixture.

  2. If the bread was sour, dissolve the baking soda in a little warm water and add it to the mixture.

Cook

  1. Cook the batter like pancakes, but at a lower heat.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  4. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk of the batter, giving body and a soft, bready flavour once soaked.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during cooking to give the pancakes structure.
All-purpose flour
Adds starch that thickens the batter and helps hold the pancakes together.
Baking soda
Neutralises acidity in sour bread and helps the pancakes rise and brown.
Milk
Softens the crumbs and adds moisture and richness to the batter.

The step that matters

Cook at a lower heat. The batter contains sugar and milk solids that brown quickly. Low heat lets the centre set before the outside darkens and burns.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, egg, flour, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, egg, flour, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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