Skip to main content
Breakfast

All-day Pancakes

A batter of flour, salt, sugar, egg, and milk cooked in oil to make pancakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

All-day Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, salt, and sugar well.

  2. Add the beaten egg and thin the batter with lukewarm milk until smooth.

  3. Beat the batter well.

  4. Let it rest for 30 minutes.

Cook

  1. Heat about ½ inch of oil in a pan.

  2. Pour spoonfuls of batter into the pan, spacing them out for smaller cakes.

  3. Turn the pancakes when the underside is brown.

  4. Avoid drafts while baking to ensure they bake crisp.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Flour and milk 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

Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the pancakes together as they cook.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds richness and structure as it sets with heat.
Milk
Adds moisture and thins the batter to a smooth, pourable consistency.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during frying.

The step that matters

Turn the pancakes when the underside is brown. The underside must set and brown before flipping; turning too early tears the soft batter, while waiting too long can scorch the outside before the centre is cooked through.

“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.

You might also like

Rice GruelRice Gruel28 recipesPeptoned Milk GruelPeptoned Milk Gruel9 recipes