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Breakfast

Pancakes Au Naturel

A simple pancake made with eggs, flour, milk, sugar, salt, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Pancakes Au Naturel

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, rub the salt into the flour and make a hole in the center.

  2. Stir in part of the milk until the flour is well mixed.

  3. Break in one egg and beat with the flat side of a spoon for five minutes.

  4. Add the second egg and beat until the surface is covered with air bubbles.

  5. Mix in the remaining milk.

Cook and serve

  1. Melt the butter in a small sauté pan.

  2. Pour in enough batter to make a thin pancake.

  3. Shake the pan gently for two to three minutes, then turn the pancake with a plate or toss it.

  4. Brown the other side, then serve on a napkin on a plate to absorb excess grease.

  5. Sprinkle with sugar and lemon juice, and eat immediately.

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 + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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
Beating air into the batter gives the pancake lift and a light, tender structure as it sets.
Flour
Forms the gluten network and body that gives the thin pancake its structure.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and provides moisture, so the batter flows thinly and cooks through.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the surface of the pancake brown in the pan.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pancake brown when sprinkled on at the end.

The step that matters

Turning the pancake. Turn it once the edges look set and the underside is golden, so the pancake holds together. Turning too early tears it, and the other side then browns unevenly.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Milletfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, milk, sugar, butter. 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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