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Two Old Spanish Receipts From Monterey, California

Enchiladas are pancakes filled with a tomato‑based chili sauce, hard‑boiled eggs, olives, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Jacqueline Harrison Smith (ed.) · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 29,058 recipes mention both. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Two Old Spanish Receipts From Monterey, California

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chili sauce

  1. Combine a can of good tomatoes, four red peppers, one onion, one small edge of garlic chopped fine, a spoonful of salt, a little chili sauce, and a spoonful of sugar to make a chili sauce.

  2. Cook the sauce until all ingredients are mixed.

  3. Add three hard-boiled eggs chopped fine, a dozen stoned olives, and half a cup of scalded raisins to the sauce.

Make and cook the pancakes

  1. Make a batter as for French pancakes: whisk together 4 ounces sifted flour, 1 egg, 2½ gills of milk, and a pinch of salt.

  2. Heat a large frying pan very hot and grease it well.

  3. Pour enough batter into the pan to just cover the bottom.

  4. After about a minute, turn the cake and flip it; cook until the pancake is done.

Assemble and serve

  1. When the pancakes are done, fill them with the sauce, roll them up, and pour sauce over them.

By Jacqueline Harrison Smith (ed.). Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the thin pancake batter as it sets in the pan.
Eggs
Bind the filling and add richness and structure to the pancake batter.
Milk
Thins the batter so it spreads into a thin pancake and adds tenderness.
Red peppers
Provide the main body and flavor of the chili sauce.
Tomatoes (in the method)
Supply moisture and acidity that form the base of the chili sauce.
Raisins
Add sweetness and soft texture to the sauce filling.

The step that matters

Heating the pan and greasing it well before pouring batter. A very hot, well-greased pan sets the thin batter quickly so it releases cleanly and cooks evenly. A cool or poorly greased pan lets the batter stick and tear when turned.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Sweet potatobetter flavor fit
  2. Arrowrootbetter flavor fit
  3. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, sugar, raisin, pepper, garlic, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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