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Irish Pancakes

A light, fluffy pancake made with eggs, cream, butter, sugar, flour, nutmeg, and lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Irish Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg yolks and whites separately.

  2. Warm the cream in a large saucepan over low heat.

  3. Strain the cream and stir in the beaten yolks and melted butter.

  4. Add the powdered sugar and gradually mix in the flour until smooth.

  5. Stir in the grated nutmeg and lemon peel.

  6. Fold in the frothed egg whites.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat butter in a pan and pour in enough batter to make a thin pancake.

  2. Fry until golden, about 5 minutes, then serve hot, stacked in a dish.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 and bind the batter, while whipped whites lighten it and help it rise.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving the pancakes a tender, soft texture.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and helps the pancakes brown golden in the pan.
Flour
Provides structure, setting the batter so the pancakes hold together when cooked.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves easily into the batter for a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Fold in the frothed egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air in the whites. Stirring hard deflates them, leaving the pancakes dense instead of light.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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