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Dessert

French Griddle-cakes

A light, sweet batter of eggs, flour, butter, sugar, and milk is fried into thin cakes, rolled with jelly, and dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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. Beat until smooth.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a frying pan and lightly grease it.

  2. Pour a tablespoon of batter into the pan, tipping it to spread evenly. Fry until light brown.

  3. Spread with jelly. Roll up.

  4. Dust with powdered sugar. Serve hot.

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
Bind the batter and add structure to the thin pancakes as they set.
Flour
Provides the body that holds the batter together and gives the pancakes their structure.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a tender texture and flavour to the batter.
Milk
Supplies liquid that thins the batter so it spreads into thin pancakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pancakes brown lightly in the pan.

The step that matters

Pour and tip the batter thinly. A tablespoon of batter spread quickly over the pan makes a thin, even pancake that cooks through before it browns too much. Thick or uneven batter leaves some areas raw and others scorched.

“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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