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Quire of Paper Pancakes

A pancake recipe using eggs, milk, flour, nutmeg, butter, sugar, wine, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Quire of Paper Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs in a large bowl.

  2. Add the milk, flour, grated nutmeg, melted butter, sugar, and wine. Mix until smooth, ensuring no lumps of flour remain.

Cook and serve

  1. Butter a pan and pour in a thin layer of batter.

  2. Cook until colored.

  3. Carefully place the pancake on a dish, sprinkling powdered sugar between each layer.

  4. Serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Milk + flourtop 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

Eggs
Provide structure and richness, binding the thin batter as it sets.
Flour
Gives the batter body and structure as it cooks.
Milk
Adds moisture and thins the batter to a pourable consistency.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the pancake brown in the pan.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pancake take on color as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cook until colored. The layer must be thin and cooked until golden on the surface before turning or stacking, so the pancake sets through without tearing or staying raw in the middle.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Tarragonfits less well
  4. Jalapenofits less well

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