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Breakfast

Pancakes

A batter of crushed sugar, egg yolks, cream, and egg whites is fried into pancakes, served with a wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Pancakes

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix crushed sugar, egg yolks, and a little cream.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form and gently fold them into the mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a frying pan and pour in a thin layer of the batter.

  2. Fry until golden, then drain on paper towels.

Make the wine sauce

  1. Take a small amount of batter and stir in one or two glasses of wine in a saucepan.

  2. Heat over heat until it boils.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Cream + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they give the batter lightness and help the pancakes rise.
Egg yolks
Bind the batter and add richness and structure as they set when cooked.
Crushed loaf sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the pancakes brown as they fry.

The step that matters

Folding the whipped egg whites into the batter. Egg whites hold air only when whipped to stiff peaks. Folding gently keeps that air from collapsing, which keeps the pancakes light instead of dense.

“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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