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Dessert

German Pancakes

A light, oven-baked pancake made with milk, eggs, flour, and salt, served with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour 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 ↓

German Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl until well combined.

  2. Add the flour and salt, then gradually mix in the milk.

  3. Beat the mixture until perfectly smooth.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a small shallow skillet and pour 3 tablespoons of the batter into it for each pancake.

  2. Cook until golden brown, then stack on a plate.

  3. Sprinkle the top with powdered sugar and cut into sections to serve.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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
Provide structure and lift, setting into the custard-like body of the pancake.
Flour
Gives the batter body so it holds its shape as it cooks.
Milk
Supplies moisture that turns to steam, helping the pancake puff in the hot pan.

The step that matters

Heat the skillet before pouring the batter. A hot pan and hot fat cause the batter to set quickly and puff. If the pan is cool, the batter spreads and stays flat and dense.

“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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