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Dessert

Irish Pancakes

A batter of milk, eggs, sugar, butter, nutmeg, lemon peel, raisins, and flour is cooked into thin pancakes and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Irish Pancakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Warm the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and whites with the sugar until light.

  3. Add the melted butter, nutmeg, lemon peel, and raisins.

  4. Pour the hot milk into the mixture while beating constantly.

  5. Add enough flour to create a thin griddle-cake batter.

Cook and serve

  1. Grease a hot pan with butter and pour in enough batter to cover the bottom.

  2. Cook until firm, then turn to brown the other side.

  3. Roll the pancake with a long thin knife and place on a hot buttered dish.

  4. Keep in a hot oven until all pancakes are baked.

  5. Dust with sugar and serve.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks and whites add richness and set the pancake structure as they cook.
Milk
Provides the liquid that thins the batter and gives a tender, moist crumb.
Flour
Forms the thin batter's structure so the pancakes hold together when cooked and rolled.
Butter
Adds fat for flavour and greases the pan so the pancakes brown and release easily.
Raisins
Add pockets of sweetness and chew throughout the pancake.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot milk into the egg mixture while beating constantly. Pouring hot liquid onto eggs without constant beating can scramble the yolks and whites. Continuous whisking spreads the heat evenly so the mixture stays smooth and thickens gently.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, butter, nutmeg, raisin, 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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