Skip to main content
Breakfast

Gingerbread Pancakes

A pancake made with gingerbread-flavored batter, including molasses, ginger, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Gingerbread Pancakes

about 20 pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Sift together the dry ingredients: flour, nutmeg, coffee, salt, baking soda, ginger, and cinnamon.

  2. In a separate bowl, combine molasses, water, melted butter, and egg.

  3. Gradually add the wet mixture to the dry ingredients, blending until almost smooth.

Cook the pancakes

  1. For each pancake, use a ¼ cup measure to scoop the batter onto a lightly greased hot griddle.

  2. Cook for about 5 minutes, turning once, until golden brown.

  3. This recipe makes about 20 pancakes, each 4 inches in diameter.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 gluten that form the pancake's structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acidity to lift and lighten the batter.
Light molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and moisture, and gives the characteristic gingerbread flavor.
Butter or margarine
Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavor, and helps the pancakes brown.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets on the griddle.

The step that matters

Gradually add the wet mixture to the dry ingredients. Mixing gently and only until almost smooth keeps gluten development limited, so the pancakes stay tender rather than tough.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, nutmeg, coffee, molasses, cinnamon, butter, egg):

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, nutmeg, coffee, molasses, cinnamon, butter, egg. 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.

You might also like

Rice GruelRice Gruel28 recipesPeptoned Milk GruelPeptoned Milk Gruel9 recipes