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Breakfast

Cocoanut Pancakes

A pancake made with coconut powder, egg, milk, and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cocoanut Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg in a bowl with the milk and a pinch of salt.

  2. Add the coconut powder and let it sit for 5 to 10 minutes.

  3. Mix in a little more cream and water until the batter is slightly thicker than regular pancake batter.

Cook the pancakes

  1. Heat lard in a frying pan until melted, then pour in half of the batter.

  2. Cook over moderate heat for about 5 minutes until the bottom is brown, then flip and cook for another 5 minutes.

  3. Repeat with the remaining batter.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Egg
Binds the batter and helps set the pancakes as they cook.
Coconut powder
Provides the coconut flavour and thickens the batter as it rests.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid so the batter pours and spreads.
Lard
Greases the pan and helps the pancake bottoms brown.

The step that matters

Resting the batter before cooking. Coconut powder is very absorbent, so it needs time to hydrate. Resting lets it swell and thicken the batter; skipping this can leave a thin, gritty batter that spreads unevenly.

“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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