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Breakfast

Swiss Pancakes

A buttery apple pancake made with flour, baking powder, milk, cream, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Swiss Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Sift the flour with the baking powder.

  2. In a bowl, mix melted butter, sugar, and beaten eggs with milk, cream, and extracts.

  3. Combine the flour mixture with the wet ingredients.

Cook and serve

  1. Melt a small amount of butter in a round frying pan.

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

  3. Fry on one side only until golden.

  4. Serve stacked with sugar sprinkled between the 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.

  1. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 the pancakes set.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the thin pancakes together.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the pancakes brown in the pan.
Baking powder
Releases gas to give the batter a little lift.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and keeps the batter moist and thin.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown.

The step that matters

Fry on one side only until golden. Cooking only one side keeps the pancake thin and tender, while the set top and golden underside show it is ready. Flipping too early can tear it, and a pan that is too hot browns the bottom before the batter sets.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, milk, cream, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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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