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English Pancakes

Thin pancakes made with flour, eggs, milk, brandy, nutmeg, and sprinkled with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

English Pancakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine the flour, eggs, and milk to make a batter.

  2. Stir in the brandy and grated nutmeg.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a frying pan and pour in the batter to form pancakes.

  2. Sprinkle a little granulated sugar over each pancake.

  3. Roll up the pancakes and 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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Brandy + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Flour and milk 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the batter its body and hold the pancake together.
Eggs
Set when heated and bind the batter, giving the pancakes structure and richness.
Milk
Thins the batter to a pourable consistency and adds moisture to the pancakes.

The step that matters

Heat the frying pan before pouring the batter. A properly hot pan sets the thin batter quickly so it forms an even pancake. If the pan is too cool, the batter spreads thin, cooks slowly, and tends to stick.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, egg, milk, brandy, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, milk, brandy, sugar. 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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