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Breakfast

Oebman Pancakes

A batter of eggs, flour, milk, and salt is folded with beaten egg whites and fried to golden brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Oebman Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Separate the eggs and beat the whites until stiff.

  2. In a bowl, combine the flour and salt.

  3. Make a thin batter by adding the sweet milk to the flour mixture.

  4. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites last.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat a large frying pan and add butter or a mix of butter and lard.

  2. Pour batter into the pan and fry until golden brown on both sides.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Whipped whites add lightness and help the pancakes rise and stay tender.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pancake together as it cooks.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour to form a thin batter and adds moisture and richness.
Butter
Fat for frying that helps the surface brown evenly and adds flavor.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites last. Folding keeps the air whipped into the egg whites. Stirring or beating them in would deflate the batter, leading to flatter, denser pancakes.

“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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