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A Thick Pancake

A thick pancake made with eggs, flour, sugar, wine, cream, and served with preserve and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

A Thick Pancake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Separate the yolks and whites of the eggs.

  2. Mix the yolks with flour, sugar, white wine, and cream or milk.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

Cook

  1. Heat butter or clarified suet in a broad saucepan.

  2. Pour the batter into the pan and cook until browned on the bottom.

  3. Brown the top side under the broiler or by flipping it carefully.

Fill and serve

  1. Spread your choice of preserve on one half and fold the other half over it.

  2. Dust with powdered sugar before serving.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter 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
Whites beaten and folded in give the batter lift and a light, airy structure.
All-purpose flour
Provides structure so the batter sets and holds its shape when cooked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top and bottom take on browning.
Cream or milk
Adds fat and moisture, making the batter tender and rich.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the whites. Stirring them in hard would deflate the batter, leaving a flatter, denser pancake.

“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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