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Dessert

Henriettas for Tea

Henriettas are small pancakes made from eggs, milk, flour, baking powder, and salt, fried until golden and dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Henriettas for Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs well in a bowl.

  2. Add the milk, baking powder, and salt, and mix well.

  3. Gradually add flour until the batter is thicker than pancake batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat fat or lard in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Pour batter into the pan and fry until golden brown on both sides.

  3. Serve hot, sprinkled with powdered sugar.

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. Egg + milktop 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
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during frying.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it holds its shape rather than spreading thin.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the pancakes rise and turn airy.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that hydrates the flour and loosens the batter.
Fat or lard
Conducts heat to the batter and promotes golden browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Pour batter into the pan and fry until golden brown on both sides. Medium heat lets the centre cook through before the outside over-browns. Flipping only once the edges look set and the surface bubbles keeps the pancake intact.

“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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