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French Pancakes— "Jenny Lind Pancakes"

A light, fluffy pancake made with eggs, flour, milk, sugar, butter, cream, brandy, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

French Pancakes— "Jenny Lind Pancakes"

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Separate the eggs.

  2. Mix the yolks with the milk.

  3. Add the sugar, melted butter, brandy, and salt, then stir in the flour until smooth.

  4. Whip the cream and fold it into the batter.

  5. Whip the egg whites and gently stir them into the mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Bake thin pancakes in a hot omelet pan until golden brown on both sides.

  2. Spread a spoonful of currant jelly on each pancake and roll it up like an omelet.

  3. Dust with powdered sugar before serving.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter, and whipped whites add lightness and airy structure.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the pancakes their body.
Cream
Whipped cream adds moisture and a tender, light texture to the batter.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to flavour and tenderness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pancakes brown in the hot pan.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Whites must be gently folded, not stirred hard, so the air bubbles stay intact; deflated whites give flat, dense pancakes.

“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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