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Dessert

Fine Pancakes

Fine pancakes made with cream, eggs, orange‑flower water, sugar, nutmeg, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fine Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter with the cream over low heat.

  2. In a bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, orange-flower water, sugar, nutmeg, and flour until smooth.

  3. Combine the cream mixture with the egg mixture and mix well.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a frying pan and butter it for the first pancake.

  2. Pour a thin layer of batter into the pan and fry quickly until golden.

  3. Serve hot.

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

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

  2. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Egg yolks bind the batter and add richness and structure to the thin pancakes.
Flour
Provides starch that thickens the batter and gives the pancakes body as they set.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, making the pancakes tender and rich.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour and helps the pancakes brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Fry quickly over steady heat. A thin layer of batter needs enough heat to set and brown before it dries or tears. Too low a heat makes the pancake pale and tough, while too high a heat scorches the surface before the centre sets.

Swap the orange

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

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

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