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Dessert

Common Pancakes

A simple batter of eggs, flour, sugar, ginger, nutmeg, and milk, fried into thin pancakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,324 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Common Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of flour for each egg, along with sugar, ginger, and nutmeg.

  3. Stir in enough milk to create a thick batter.

Prepare the pan

  1. Heat a small frying pan and melt a little butter in it, then pour it out and wipe the pan.

  2. Rub the pan with a buttered cloth and add a small piece of butter.

Cook

  1. When the butter froths, pour in a ladleful of batter and swirl the pan to spread it evenly.

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. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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
Provide structure as they set, and add richness and color to the pancake.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the batter, which sets as the pancake cooks.
Milk
Adds moisture and thins the flour and egg mixture into a pourable batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pancake brown in the pan.
Butter
Adds fat for flavor and helps the surface brown when frying.

The step that matters

Heating the pan until the butter froths. If the pan is too cool, the batter spreads unevenly and sticks; if too hot, the surface scorches before the pancake sets. Frothing butter signals a suitable frying temperature.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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