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Pea Pancakes

A pancake made from peas, eggs, milk, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Pea Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Drain the peas and soak them in slightly salted ice water for 30 minutes.

  2. Pour off the water and boil the peas until soft.

  3. Rub the peas through a colander while hot.

Make the batter

  1. Mix in pepper, salt, and butter.

  2. Let the mixture cool.

  3. Gradually stir in the beaten eggs, milk, and just enough flour to bind the mixture.

Cook

  1. Cook on a griddle like pancakes.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 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. Peas + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,309 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

Butter and flour 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

Peas
Form the bulk and body of the batter, giving it a soft, thick texture and mild sweetness.
Eggs
Help bind the batter and set the pancakes as they cook.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the thick pea purée into a pourable batter.
Flour
Gives the batter enough structure to hold together on the griddle.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender crumb.

The step that matters

Add the flour gradually, only until the batter binds. Flour contains proteins that form gluten when mixed with liquid. Adding too much, or mixing it in too hard, makes pancakes dense and tough, so stop once the batter holds together.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Pecansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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.

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