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Dessert

Cream Pancakes

A thin batter of egg yolks, cream, sugar, and flour fried in lard, served hot with grated sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cream Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the yolks of 2 eggs with 1 cup of cream and 2 ounces of sugar.

  2. Add enough flour to create a thin batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a pan and fry the batter as thin as possible.

  2. Grate additional sugar over 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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + flourtop 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. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter for a tender, custardy pancake.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, giving the pancakes a rich, soft texture.
Flour
Provides structure once heated, setting the thin batter into a pancake.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown lightly in the pan.

The step that matters

Frying the batter as thin as possible. A thin layer of batter heats through quickly and cooks evenly, so it sets before it can tear or turn dry. Thick batter cooks unevenly and stays doughy in the middle.

“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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