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Tansy Pancakes

A pancake made with eggs, cream, flour, sugar, tansy juice, spinach juice, fried in butter and garnished with Seville orange.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Tansy Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add the cream, flour, and sugar; beat for 15 minutes.

  3. Mix in the juice of tansy and spinach.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat fresh butter in a pan and pour in the batter.

  2. Fry until golden brown on both sides.

  3. Serve hot, garnished with Seville orange.

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

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

  3. Flour + spinachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Spinach + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together276 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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
Provide structure and richness, setting as the pancake cooks.
Flour
Provides structure, thickening the batter so the pancakes hold together.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving a tender texture.
Fine sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during frying.
Fresh butter
Adds fat for frying, aiding browning and flavor.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown on both sides. Cooking over steady heat sets the eggs and flour while browning the surface. Too high a heat scorches the outside before the centre sets, and too low a heat leaves the pancake pale and soft.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, flour, sugar, spinach, 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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