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Plain Pancakes

A simple pancake batter made with eggs, flour, salt, milk, and dripping, fried until golden.

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 ↓

Plain Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Whisk the eggs thoroughly in a bowl.

  2. Add the flour and beat until smooth and lump-free.

  3. Stir in the salt and milk.

  4. Let the batter rest in a cool place for 1-2 hours.

Cook the pancakes

  1. Heat a skillet and add ½ ounce of dripping for each pancake.

  2. Pour batter into the skillet and fry until golden brown on both sides.

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. Flour + milktop 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
Bind the batter and add structure as they set when fried.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten-based structure that holds the pancake together.
Milk
Thins the batter to a pourable consistency and adds moisture.
Dripping
Fat in the pan that conducts heat and helps the pancakes brown and release.

The step that matters

Beating the flour into the eggs until smooth. Lumps of dry flour stay unhydrated, so the batter turns out uneven and floury. Beating thoroughly lets the flour hydrate evenly and builds a smooth batter that cooks uniformly.

“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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