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Dessert

Crepe

A thin pancake made from flour, milk, eggs, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Crepe

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix 1 cup of flour with 1 cup of milk.

  2. Add 2 eggs and a pinch of salt, then whisk until smooth.

Cook the crepes

  1. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a skillet over medium heat.

  2. Pour a small amount of batter into the skillet, swirling to coat the bottom.

  3. Cook until the edges lift, then flip and cook the other side until golden.

  4. Repeat with remaining batter, adding more butter as needed.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the batter once it is mixed with liquid.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and thins the batter to a pourable consistency.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the thin batter set into a delicate, cohesive sheet.
Butter
Adds fat for gentle browning and prevents the crepes from sticking to the skillet.

The step that matters

Swirling the batter in the skillet. A thin, even layer cooks quickly and evenly. Too much batter makes a thick, doughy crepe that is hard to flip, while uneven swirling leaves thick and thin spots that brown unevenly.

“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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