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Pancakes of Bice

Pancakes made with Irish moss, cream, eggs, butter, and flour, fried in lard or dripping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Irish moss and nutmeg share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pancakes of Bice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the moss jelly

  1. Boil the Irish moss in a small amount of water until it forms a jelly.

  2. Let it cool, then mix with cream, eggs, salt, and nutmeg.

Make the batter and fry

  1. Stir in warmed butter and enough flour to make a thick batter.

  2. Fry in a small amount of lard or dripping until golden brown.

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. Irish moss + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together15 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Irish moss
Sets with water into a jelly that gives the pancakes body and a light, soft structure.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help set the batter as it cooks.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the batter.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and tenderness in the finished pancakes.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it holds its shape in the pan.

The step that matters

Frying until golden brown. The batter is thick and rich with butter and dairy, so it can scorch on the outside before the centre cooks through. Moderate heat and a small amount of fat let the surface brown evenly as the inside sets.

“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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