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German Egg Pancakes

A light, fluffy pancake made from eggs, flour, water, milk, and fried in butter and lard.

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 ↓

German Egg Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs with the water.

  2. Stir in the flour, then add the milk.

  3. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a mixture of butter and lard in an omelet pan.

  2. Pour batter to make pancakes the size of the pan.

  3. Before turning, place a small lump of butter in the center.

  4. To turn, slide the pancake onto a smooth tin cover and invert the pan over it.

  5. Serve immediately.

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
Whites trapped by folding add lift and a light, airy structure to the batter.
Flour
Gives the batter body so the pancake holds together when turned.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid that thins the batter and helps it set and brown.
Butter and lard
Fat for frying that adds richness and browning to the pancake surface.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiffly beaten whites hold air that makes the pancake rise and stay light. Stirring them in rather than folding gently knocks out that air, leaving a dense, flat pancake.

“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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