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Windmill Pancakes

A pancake made from beetroot pulp mixed with egg yolks, flour, cream, sugar, nutmeg, and brandy, fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beetroot and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Windmill Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Boil the beetroot until very tender, then peel and slice it.

  2. Pound the beetroot slices to a pulp in a marble mortar.

  3. Add the egg yolks, flour, cream, powdered sugar, grated nutmeg, and brandy to the beetroot pulp, and mix everything into a batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the pancakes in lard until golden brown.

  2. Serve hot, garnished with green sweetmeats.

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. Beetroot + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together124 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beetroot + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together515 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beetroot
Provides the bulk of the batter and its colour and earthy sweetness.
Egg yolks
Bind the batter and add richness and structure to the pancakes as they set.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it holds together when fried.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the texture of the pancakes.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour to the batter.

The step that matters

Frying the pancakes in lard until golden brown. Frying over moderate heat lets the outside brown through the Maillard reaction while the inside sets. Too hot and the outside burns before the centre cooks; too cool and the pancakes soak up fat and turn greasy.

Swap the beetroot

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Beetrootthe original

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