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Breakfast

Pancakes Fried Without Butter or Lard

A batter of eggs, cream, sugar, wine, nutmeg, and flour cooked in a frying pan without butter or lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pancakes Fried Without Butter or Lard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs well in a bowl.

  2. Add the cream, sugar, wine, and grated nutmeg, and mix thoroughly.

  3. Gradually add flour until the batter is thick, similar to ordinary pancake batter.

Cook

  1. Heat a frying pan over medium heat and pour in a thin layer of batter.

  2. Cook until golden brown on one side, then flip and cook the other side.

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 + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the pan.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, giving the pancakes a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the surface brown in the pan.
Flour
Provides starch that thickens the batter and sets the pancake's structure as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cook until golden brown on one side, then flip. The pan should be hot enough to brown the underside without burning, and the pancake should set firmly before flipping so it does not tear. Browning comes from sugar and proteins reacting with heat.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, sugar, wine, flour):

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, sugar, wine, 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.

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