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English Pancakes

A thin batter of flour, eggs, milk, brandy, and nutmeg cooked in a pan and sprinkled with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg 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 ↓

English Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, eggs, and milk to create a batter.

  2. Add the brandy and grated nutmeg, and mix well.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a frying pan and pour in enough batter to cover the bottom.

  2. Cook until golden brown.

  3. Sprinkle with granulated sugar.

  4. Roll up the pancake.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Brandy + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten structure that holds the batter together.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the pancake as it cooks.
Milk
Adds liquid that thins the batter and contributes to browning.
Brandy
Adds a small amount of alcohol that contributes aroma to the batter.

The step that matters

Cook until golden brown. The pan must be hot enough to set the batter quickly and brown the surface. If the heat is too low, the pancake dries out before it colours, and if it is too high, the outside burns before the centre sets.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

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