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Baking Powder Pancakes

A simple pancake recipe using sweet milk, egg, butter, baking powder, flour, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Baking Powder Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine sweet milk, egg, melted butter, baking powder, and a pinch of salt.

  2. Gradually add flour until you achieve a thin batter consistency.

Cook the pancakes

  1. Heat a skillet over medium heat and pour in batter to form pancakes.

  2. Cook until bubbles form on the surface, then flip and cook 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, making the pancakes rise and turn light.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness to the pancakes.
Sweet milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and gives the batter its body.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor, and helps browning in the pan.
Flour
Forms the gluten and starch network that gives the pancakes their structure.

The step that matters

Cook until bubbles form on the surface, then flip. Bubbles appear as leavening gas expands and rises through the batter and the surface sets. Flipping too early tears the pancake and leaves it raw in the middle, while waiting for bubbles to pop and the edges to dry lets the set underside hold together.

“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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