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Dessert

French Pancakes

French pancakes are thin, lightly sweetened pancakes served with jelly and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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French Pancakes

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

French Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat together the eggs and flour until smooth.

  2. Melt the butter and add it to the batter along with the sugar and milk, then beat until smooth.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a lightly greased frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Pour a tablespoon of batter into the pan, tipping it to spread evenly.

  3. Fry until lightly browned.

  4. Spread the pancake with jelly.

  5. Roll the pancake up.

  6. Dust the rolled pancake with powdered sugar before serving 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Bind the batter and add structure to the thin pancake as it sets.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the batter body and hold the pancake together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the pancake brown in the pan.
Milk
Thins the batter to a pourable consistency and adds moisture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to browning in the pan.

The step that matters

Fry until lightly browned. The pan must be hot enough for the thin batter to set and brown quickly, but not so hot that it scorches before the pancake is cooked through. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction and caramelisation of the sugars and milk solids, so it should be watched closely.

“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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