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Stir Pan Cakes

A quick batter of milk, flour, eggs, and butter cooked in a pan to make thin, smooth cakes.

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 ↓

Stir Pan Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Gradually add the flour and milk alternately to form a thin, smooth batter.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a frying pan and melt the butter.

  2. Pour in 1 teacup of batter, stirring immediately to keep it centered.

  3. Cook until the underside is lightly browned, then flip to brown the other side.

  4. Serve immediately on a hot dish without stacking.

  5. Enjoy with butter and fine 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. 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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cakes set.
Flour
Provides the starch that sets the batter into a cake structure.
Milk
Thins the batter and adds moisture and tenderness.
Butter
Greases the pan and adds richness and browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Pour in 1 teacup of batter, stirring immediately to keep it centered.. The batter is thin and runny, so it spreads quickly in the pan. Stirring right away keeps the batter centered and helps form an even cake before it sets.

“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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