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Scotch Pancakes

A batter of eggs, sugar, flour, milk, and salt cooked in butter, served hot with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Scotch Pancakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs (yolks and whites) with the sugar.

  2. Mix a little milk with the flour until smooth, then combine the flour and remaining milk with the egg mixture.

  3. Add salt.

Cook the pancakes

  1. Heat a frying pan and add a bit of butter.

  2. Pour a cup of batter into the pan and cook until it sets.

  3. Turn the pancake over, sprinkle with sugar, and roll it up.

  4. Keep warm on a dish.

  5. Repeat until all batter is used.

Serve

  1. Serve pancakes hot with sifted sugar.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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 and richness, setting the batter as they cook.
Flour
Forms the batter's structure, which sets firm as the pancake cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pancakes brown lightly on the surface.
Milk or cream
Supplies liquid to hydrate the flour and adds tenderness and richness.

The step that matters

Cooking the pancake until it sets before turning. Turning too early tears the pancake because the batter has not yet firmed. Waiting until the surface is set lets the pancake hold together when flipped.

“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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