Name: Pancakes
Ingredients: 1 cup coarse wheaten meal; 1 cup sour milk; 1 teaspoon baking soda; cream; sugar

Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

In a bowl, mix the coarse wheaten meal and sour milk to form a batter.
Add the baking soda and stir well.

Cook and serve

Pour small amounts of the batter onto a hot pan to form cakes.
Cook until golden brown on both sides.
Serve with cream and 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together29,399 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together77,875 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

Coarse wheaten meal: Provides the main body and structure of the cakes as the batter sets in the pan.
Sour milk: Hydrates the meal into a batter and its acidity reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acid in sour milk to release gas, helping the cakes rise and turn light.

“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.