Skip to main content
Main

Pea Pancakes

A savory pancake made from mashed peas, flour, milk, egg, butter, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Pea Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Boil the peas until soft.

  2. Mash the peas.

  3. Mix in the butter, salt, pepper, beaten egg, milk, flour, and baking powder until well combined.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a griddle.

  2. Pour the batter onto the griddle to form pancakes.

  3. Cook until golden brown on both sides.

  4. 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Peas
Provide the main body and flavour of the pancakes.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps give the pancakes structure as they set.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the batter as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the pancakes rise and become lighter.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a pourable consistency.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavour and helps browning on the griddle.

The step that matters

Cook until golden brown on both sides. The griddle must be hot enough to brown the outside before the centre cooks through. Browning comes from heat-driven Maillard reactions and gives flavour. Flipping too early can tear the pancake because the centre has not set yet.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Milletfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, egg, milk, flour. 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.

More pea pancakes recipes

Green 6 See all 8 →

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesGreen Peas SoupGreen Peas Soup35 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes