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Oxford-Pancakes

A pancake made with eggs, cream, flour, optional butter, sweetened with sugar and spiced with nutmeg or cinnamon, served with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Oxford-Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs in a large bowl.

  2. Add the cream, flour, and butter if using, and mix well.

  3. Sweeten with sugar and season with nutmeg or cinnamon.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a frying pan and pour in a small amount of batter.

  2. Cook until lightly browned on both sides.

  3. Sift sugar over the pancakes as they cook.

  4. Serve with lemon wedges to squeeze over the pancakes.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and give the pancakes their structure as they set.
Flour
Thickens the batter and gives the pancakes body so they hold together.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the pancakes tender.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and flavour, and helps the pancakes brown.

The step that matters

Cook until lightly browned on both sides. The pan should be hot enough to brown the surface quickly. If it is too cool, the pancakes absorb fat, turn pale and steam, and become tough. Cooking both sides until golden gives flavour through browning.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, flour, butter, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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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