Name: Cream Pancakes
Ingredients: 2 eggs, yolks only; 1 pint cream; 2 ounces sifted sugar; a pinch of nutmeg; a pinch of cinnamon; a pinch of mace; butter for frying

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cream Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

Beat the yolks of the eggs well.
Mix the beaten yolks with the cream, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, and mace.

Fry the pancakes

Rub a pan with a bit of butter.
Fry the mixture in the pan 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.

Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,557 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks: Add richness and help bind the batter so the pancakes hold together.
Cream: Adds moisture and fat, giving the pancakes a soft, tender texture.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the pancakes brown lightly in the pan.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, butter):

Cardamomfits better
Allspicefits better
Clovefits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, 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.