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Dessert

Fine Pancakes Without Butter or Lard

A batter of eggs, cream, sugar, wine, nutmeg, and flour is cooked into thin pancakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fine Pancakes Without Butter or Lard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs well.

  2. Strain and mix with cream, sugar, wine, and grated nutmeg.

  3. Add flour until the batter is almost as thick as ordinary pancake batter.

Cook

  1. Heat a frying pan until hot and wipe it with a clean cloth.

  2. Pour in the batter to make thin pancakes.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 set the pancakes as they cook.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the pancakes tender.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pancakes brown in the pan.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it holds its body on the pan.

The step that matters

Heat the pan until hot, then wipe it. A properly hot pan sets the thin batter quickly so it cooks evenly without sticking. Wiping it with a clean cloth leaves a light film of fat, which helps the pancakes release and brown cleanly.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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