Skip to main content
Dessert

French Pancakes

A sweet, baked pancake made with eggs, milk, sugar, butter, flour, baking powder, and served with powdered sugar and jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
French Pancakes

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 ↓

French Pancakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Whisk the yolks until creamy.

  3. Whisk the whites until frothy.

  4. Add the yolks to the butter and sugar mixture.

  5. Stir the milk into the mixture.

  6. Butter six pie plates.

  7. Sift the flour with the baking powder.

Make the batter

  1. Quickly stir the sifted flour and baking powder into the mixture along with the egg whites.

  2. Pour the batter into the buttered plates.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until brown in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  2. Dust the pancakes with powdered sugar.

  3. Layer them with a little jelly in between.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter and whites, whisked to froth, give the pancakes lift and a light structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds richness and tenderness and helps the pancakes brown.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pancakes together as the batter sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, helping the pancakes rise and become light.
Milk
Adds moisture to the batter and helps it bake into a tender pancake.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour and egg whites quickly. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, making the pancakes tough, while the whisked whites trapped air that baking powder gas needs to lift the batter. Folding gently and briefly keeps both the air and the tenderness.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes