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Dessert

German Pancake

A light, oven-baked pancake made with eggs, milk, flour, butter, and salt.

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

German Pancake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs thoroughly without separating the yolks and whites.

  2. Add salt to the eggs.

  3. Sift in the flour.

  4. Gradually add the milk while beating well.

Cook the pancake

  1. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a large frying pan.

  2. Pour the batter into the pan.

  3. Cook slowly until browned underneath.

  4. Grease the bottom of a large pie plate.

  5. Slip the pancake onto the plate.

  6. Add the remaining tablespoon of butter to the frying pan.

  7. Heat the pan.

  8. Turn the uncooked side of the pancake down to brown.

  9. Carefully slip the pancake onto a large heated platter.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately with sugar and lemon slices or your choice of preserve or syrup.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Provide structure and lift, setting the batter as it bakes into a puffed pancake.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the pancake its body and chewy structure.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps the batter steam and puff in the hot pan.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavor and helps the edges brown in the hot pan.

The step that matters

Pour the batter into the hot, buttered pan. The pan must be hot enough when the batter goes in so the edges set and steam lifts the pancake. A cold pan produces a flat, dense result instead of a puffed one.

“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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