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Breakfast

Fine Pancakes

Thin pancakes made from a liquid batter of flour, egg, milk, and salt, cooked in butter and filled with jam, jelly, or cinnamon and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Fine Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat together the egg and flour.

  2. Add enough milk to create a very liquid batter.

  3. Mix in a pinch of salt.

Cook and fill

  1. Heat a smooth frying pan with a low edge and grease it with a little melted butter.

  2. Pour in just enough batter to cover the bottom of the pan.

  3. Once the batter sets, quickly turn it over.

  4. Fill the pancakes with jam, jelly, or a mixture of cinnamon and sugar.

  5. Roll them up.

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 + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Provides structure so the thin batter sets into a cohesive pancake.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps it set firm when cooked.
Milk
Thins the batter to a very liquid consistency so it spreads into a thin layer.
Melted butter
Greases the pan so the thin pancake releases easily and adds richness.

The step that matters

Turning the pancake. The pancake must have set enough to hold its shape before turning. Turning too early tears it, while waiting too long can dry it out and make it brittle, so turn it quickly once the surface sets.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, milk, butter. 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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