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Dessert

Pan Cakes

Pan cakes are fried cakes made from a batter of sugar, butter, eggs, milk, flour, baking powder, nutmeg, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Pan Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat together sugar, butter, and eggs until well combined.

  2. Add nutmeg, salt, and milk; mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, sift flour with baking powder.

  4. Combine wet and dry ingredients until just mixed; the batter should be pourable.

Fry

  1. Drop spoonfuls of batter into boiling fat and fry 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add richness and structure as they set in the hot fat.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavour in the finished cakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cakes rise and turn light and airy.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cakes as they cook.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and sugar and gives the batter its pourable consistency.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the cakes brown in the hot fat.

The step that matters

Combine wet and dry ingredients until just mixed. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which makes the cakes tough. Stop once the flour is incorporated and the batter is still pourable.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, egg, milk, flour):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, milk, flour. 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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