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Dessert

French Pancakes

A French pancake made with eggs, flour, butter, milk, and sugar, fried and rolled with jelly, dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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French Pancakes

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 ↓

French Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs and flour together until smooth.

  2. Melt the butter, then add it to the batter with the sugar and milk; beat until smooth.

Cook and fill

  1. Heat a frying pan, lightly grease it, pour in a tablespoonful of batter, and tilt the pan to spread it evenly.

  2. Fry the pancake until light brown.

  3. Spread jelly over the pancake.

  4. Roll the pancake up.

  5. Dust the roll with powdered sugar.

  6. 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. Butter + milktop 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. Flour + sugartop 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).

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 give the pancakes structure as they set.
Flour
Provides the starch that thickens the batter and gives the pancake its body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, contributing tenderness and flavour to the pancake.
Milk
Supplies liquid that thins the batter and adds moisture and browning through milk sugars.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pancake brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Fry the pancake until light brown. Cooking over moderate heat until just light brown sets the thin batter without scorching it. The sugar in the batter browns quickly, so too much heat can burn the outside before the centre is set.

“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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