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 ↓
Pancakes of All Kinds
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
Sift flour, baking powder, and salt into a bowl.
Beat the egg yolks.
Mix the egg yolks with milk.
Combine the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients until smooth.
Beat the egg whites until stiff.
Fold the stiff egg whites into the batter.
If the batter is too thin, add a little more flour.
Make the sour milk version
For sour milk pancakes, mix flour and sour milk the night before.
Let the mixture sit covered.
In the morning, add melted butter, salt, and dissolved baking soda.
Beat the mixture until light.
Cook
Preheat the griddle until hot enough to hiss when batter is added.
Grease the griddle with a piece of fat salt pork or use a soapstone griddle.
Pour batter onto the griddle.
Cook until bubbles form.
Flip the pancake.
Cook until golden.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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
- All-purpose flour
- Provides the starch and structure that hold the pancake together.
- Eggs
- Add structure and richness, and the whites lift the batter when folded in.
- Milk
- Hydrates the flour and gives the batter its liquid and tenderness.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas in the batter, helping the pancakes rise and become light.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acid in sour milk to produce gas, helping the pancakes rise.
- Melted butter
- Adds fat for flavor and a tender crumb, and helps browning on the griddle.
The step that matters
Preheat the griddle until hot enough to hiss. If the griddle is too cool, the batter spreads and absorbs fat, producing soggy, pale pancakes. A properly hot surface sets the outside quickly so it browns and releases cleanly.
“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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