Why it works: Wine and cider work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 439 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓
Pancakes
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare a batter similar to that used for pudding.
Heat lard in a pan until boiling.
Spoon the batter into the boiling lard, frying until golden brown.
Remove the pancakes and place them on a dish.
Sift sugar over the pancakes before serving.
Serve with sugar and wine, sugar and cider, or sugar and lemon juice.
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.
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Wine + cidertop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together439 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
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Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together6,157 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Cider + lemontop 24% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together986 recipes
Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
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Sugar + cidertop 27% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,308 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Swap the lemon
The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, wine, cider):
- Applefits better
- Plumfits better
- Grapefits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, wine, cider. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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