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Breakfast

English Pancakes

A light, thin batter pancake made with milk, eggs, flour, and baking powder, cooked in butter and served with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

English Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Sift together the flour, salt, and baking powder.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs with the sugar, then mix in the milk and cream.

  3. Combine the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients to form a thin batter.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a small, round frying pan and melt a little butter in it.

  2. Pour about ½ cup of batter into the pan, tilting it to cover the bottom.

  3. Cook on a hot fire until the bottom is browned, then flip to brown the other side.

  4. Butter each pancake, roll it up, and sprinkle with powdered sugar before serving.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the thin pancakes.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the batter as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the pancakes rise and become light.
Milk
Thins the batter and provides moisture for a tender texture.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving a softer, more tender pancake.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pancakes brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Thin the batter and cover the pan bottom. A thin batter spreads into a thin, even pancake, while too thick a batter cooks unevenly. Cooking on a hot fire browns the bottom before the other side is flipped.

“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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