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Breakfast

Quire of Paper Pancakes

A light, sweet pancake made with milk, egg yolks, flour, sugar, butter, Madeira wine, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Quire of Paper Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the milk with the beaten egg yolks.

  2. Add the flour, sugar, melted butter, Madeira wine, and grated nutmeg.

Cook

  1. Grease the pans with fresh butter once; this will suffice for all pancakes.

  2. Cook the batter in the prepared pans 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Egg yolks
Bind the batter and add richness and structure as they set when cooked.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the thin pancakes together as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the pancakes brown in the pan.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pancakes take on a golden brown colour.
Milk
Provides the liquid that makes the batter pourable and gives the pancakes moisture.

The step that matters

Cook the batter in the prepared pans until golden brown. Sugar and milk proteins brown quickly, so the heat must be moderate and the pancakes watched closely. Too hot a pan browns the outside before the batter sets through.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, flour, sugar, butter, madeira wine):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, flour, sugar, butter, madeira wine. 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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