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Dessert

Cream Pancakes

A thin batter of egg yolks, cream, sugar, and flour is fried into pancakes and served with grated sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Cream Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the yolks of 2 eggs with 1 cup of cream and 2 ounces of sugar.

  2. Gradually add enough flour to create a thin batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a pan and pour in the batter to fry as thin pancakes.

  2. Once cooked, grate additional sugar over the pancakes and serve hot.

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

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

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Add richness and help bind the batter for a tender pancake.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, giving the pancakes a rich, soft texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the thin batter together when fried.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pancakes brown lightly in the pan.

The step that matters

Frying the thin pancakes. A thin batter cooks quickly and can scorch or tear if the lard is not hot enough or the pan is overcrowded. Moderate, steady heat lets the surface set and turn golden before flipping.

“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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