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Pancakes

A sweet batter of eggs, cream, sugar, nutmeg, sherry, and flour, fried into thin pancakes and served with sifted sugar and lemon.

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

Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs extremely well.

  2. Mix the strained eggs with cream, sugar, nutmeg, sherry, and enough flour to make a batter slightly thicker than ordinary pancake batter.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a frying pan until hot and wipe it clean.

  2. Pour in enough batter for a thin pancake and fry for about five minutes.

  3. Stack the pancakes with sifted sugar between each and serve hot with cut lemon.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 set into a tender, custard-like structure as the pancake cooks.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the pancakes soft and tender.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it holds together when poured and fried.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pancakes brown lightly in the pan.

The step that matters

Pour in enough batter for a thin pancake. Too much batter makes a thick, under-cooked centre, while too little tears. A thin layer lets the egg and flour set evenly through the pancake before it browns.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, sugar, nutmeg, sherry, flour):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, sugar, nutmeg, sherry, 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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