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Breakfast

French Griddle- Cakes

A batter of eggs, flour, butter, sugar, and milk cooked on a skillet to make light brown pancakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

French Griddle- Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat together the eggs and flour until smooth.

  2. Melt the butter and add it to the batter along with the sugar and milk; mix until smooth.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a lightly greased skillet over medium heat.

  2. Pour 1 tablespoon of batter at a time into the skillet, spreading it evenly by tilting the pan.

  3. Fry until light brown, then serve with jelly, rolled up, and dusted with sugar.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Provide structure and richness, helping the thin batter set into a tender pancake.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the pancakes body and structure as they set.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture, and helps the pancakes brown slightly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to browning in the pan.
Milk
Supplies liquid that thins the batter and adds moisture and tenderness.

The step that matters

Spreading the batter in the pan. Pouring a small amount and tilting the pan spreads the batter thinly and evenly, so the pancake cooks through quickly without thick or pale patches. Medium heat lets the surface brown before the centre dries out.

“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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