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Ginger Pancakes

A batter of eggs, flour, ginger, milk, and brandy cooked into pancakes, served with lemon juice and sifted sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Ginger Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the yolks of three eggs and the white of one egg until smooth.

  2. Add four tablespoons of flour, a pinch of salt, and one teaspoon of grated ginger, and mix until smooth.

  3. Stir in two cups of milk until well combined.

  4. Just before cooking, add two tablespoons of brandy to the batter.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the pancakes in a skillet over medium heat until golden brown.

  2. Serve with lemon juice and sifted sugar.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter into a smooth, tender pancake.
Flour
Provides structure so the pancakes hold together when cooked.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that makes the batter pourable and moistens the pancakes.
Brandy
Adds aroma; its alcohol evaporates during cooking, leaving flavour rather than much liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the brandy just before cooking. Alcohol evaporates when heated and the aroma fades with time, so adding brandy at the last moment keeps its flavour noticeable in the finished pancakes.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, milk, brandy, lemon, sugar. 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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