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To Make a Pink-coloured Pancake

A pancake made with beetroot, egg yolks, flour, cream, sugar, nutmeg, and brandy, fried in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beetroot and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Make a Pink-coloured Pancake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Boil the beetroot until tender and mash it finely.

  2. Add the egg yolks, flour, cream, sugar, and grated nutmeg to the beetroot.

  3. Pour in the brandy and mix everything together for 30 minutes.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the mixture in butter until golden brown.

  2. Garnish with green sweetmeats, preserved apricots, or green sprigs of myrtle.

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. Beetroot + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together124 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beetroot + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together515 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beetroot
Provides the main bulk, colour and earthy sweetness of the pancake.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and add richness, helping it set when fried.
Flour
Adds body so the mixture holds together rather than spreading thinly.
Cream
Adds moisture and fat, giving a softer, richer texture.
Brandy
Adds aroma and a warm flavour that carries the nutmeg and sweetness.

The step that matters

Frying in butter until golden brown. Butter browns quickly and can burn before the centre sets. Moderate heat lets the pancake cook through and develop an even golden crust without turning bitter.

Swap the beetroot

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Beetrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, cream, sugar, nutmeg, brandy, butter. 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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