Name: Cream Pancakes
Ingredients: ½ pint of cream; 6 egg yolks; 3 egg whites; ¼ pound of butter; 2 tablespoons of flour; pounded loaf sugar to taste

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 ↓

Cream Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

Beat the yolks of 6 eggs separately.
Beat the whites of 3 eggs separately.
Mix the cream with the beaten yolks.
Add enough flour to make a thick batter.
Break the butter into small pieces and mix the butter into the batter.

Cook and serve

Heat a pan with butter.
Pour the batter into the pan.
Fry until golden brown.
Strew pounded loaf sugar to taste between the pancakes as you stack them on a dish.

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.

Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs: Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whites are beaten separately for lightness.
Cream: Adds richness and moisture, giving the pancakes a tender texture.
Flour: Provides structure so the batter thickens and holds together when fried.
Butter: Adds fat and flavour, and helps the pancakes brown in the pan.

“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.