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English Pancakes

A thin batter of buckwheat flour, milk, eggs, and cream is cooked into pancakes, then buttered, rolled, and dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Buckwheat and flour work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 660 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

English Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Sift together the buckwheat flour, salt, and baking powder.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs with sugar, then dilute with milk and cream.

  3. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients to form a thin batter.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a small round frying pan and melt a little butter in it.

  2. Pour about ½ cup of batter into the pan, tilting to cover the bottom.

  3. Cook on a hot fire until browned, then flip to brown the other side.

  4. Butter each pancake, roll it up, and sprinkle 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. Buckwheat + flourtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together660 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Bind the batter and add richness and structure as they set in the pan.
Buckwheat flour
Forms the body of the batter and gives the pancakes their earthy flavour.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the pancakes rise and become lighter.
Milk
Thins the batter to a pourable consistency and adds moisture.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, softening the texture of the pancakes.
Sugar
Promotes browning in the pan and adds sweetness.

The step that matters

Cook on a hot fire until browned, then flip. The pan must be hot enough to set the thin batter quickly and brown it. If the pan is too cool, the pancake absorbs fat, turns pale and tough, and may tear when flipped.

Swap the buckwheat

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Buckwheatthe original
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, flour, cream, butter. 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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