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Dessert

Pikelets

A small pancake made from flour, eggs, milk, salt, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pikelets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Whisk the milk and eggs together in a bowl.

  2. Add the flour, salt, and barm to the mixture.

  3. Stir until well combined.

  4. Let the batter rise until it has doubled in size.

Cook

  1. Heat a griddle or frying pan.

  2. Pour the batter onto the hot surface in small rounds.

  3. When bubbles form on the surface, flip them over.

  4. Cook until golden brown.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 structure of the batter once it is cooked.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind the batter together.
Milk
Provides the liquid that turns the flour into a pourable batter.
New barm
Yeast culture that makes the batter rise and gives it a light, airy texture.

The step that matters

Let the batter rise until doubled. The barm needs time to ferment and produce gas; if the batter is not allowed to rise fully, the pikelets will be dense rather than light and airy.

“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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