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Breakfast

Flour Pancakes

A simple pancake made with eggs, flour, baking soda, salt, and sour milk, optionally with boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Flour Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak dry bread in sour milk.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in baking soda and salt.

  3. Add flour gradually until the mixture thickens.

  4. If using boiled rice, reduce the amount of flour.

Cook

  1. Cook pancakes on a hot griddle until golden brown.

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 + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Bread + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set on the griddle.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas, helping the pancakes rise and lighten.
Flour
Thickens the batter and gives the pancakes their body and structure.
Sour milk
Adds acidity and moisture, and softens the soaked dry bread into the batter.

The step that matters

Cook pancakes on a hot griddle until golden brown. A griddle that is too cool lets the batter spread and absorb moisture before it sets, giving flat, soggy pancakes. A hot surface sets the eggs and starches quickly and drives browning, which develops flavour and colour.

“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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