Skip to main content
Main

Spinach Pancakes

Spinach pancakes made with egg, milk, flour, salt, fried in lard, folded with spinach, then baked with milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and spinach are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,564 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Spinach Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg in a bowl.

  2. Mix in the milk, salt, and flour until smooth.

Fry and bake

  1. Heat lard in a skillet until smoking.

  2. Pour the pancake mixture into the skillet and fry for a few minutes until brown.

  3. Fold in the cold, left-over spinach.

  4. Transfer the pancake and spinach to a baking pan.

  5. Add 1 cup of milk and bake for 30 minutes.

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. Flour + spinachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + spinachtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Egg
Binds the batter and helps set the pancake's structure as it cooks.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter, and in the baking pan it keeps the pancake tender.
Flour
Provides starch that thickens the batter and gives the pancake its body.
Spinach
Adds filling and moisture to the pancake, with a mild green flavor.

The step that matters

Heat the lard until smoking before frying. A very hot fat sears the batter's surface quickly, so the pancake browns and holds together rather than absorbing grease and turning soggy.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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.

You might also like

Spinach SoupSpinach Soup50 recipesCream of SpinachCream of Spinach29 recipesCreamed Spinach SoupCreamed Spinach Soup19 recipesSpinach and EggsSpinach and Eggs8 recipes