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Breakfast

To Make Pancakes

A simple batter of eggs, flour, milk, and salt is fried into pancakes and served with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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To Make Pancakes

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 ↓

To Make Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Ensure the eggs are fresh.

  2. Break each egg into a cup.

  3. Whisk them in a bowl.

  4. Add the flour, salt, and a few drops of milk.

  5. Beat until smooth.

  6. Gradually pour in the remaining milk until the batter is the consistency of thick cream.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a small frying pan. Ensure it is clean to prevent sticking.

  2. Add about ½ tablespoon of butter to the hot pan and let it melt.

  3. Pour in about ⅓ cup of batter for a 5‑inch pancake.

  4. Fry for about 4 minutes until browned on one side.

  5. Sprinkle powdered sugar on the cooked pancake.

  6. Roll it up in the pan.

  7. Transfer it to a dish.

  8. Repeat until you have enough pancakes.

  9. Serve them immediately for the best taste.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + sugartop 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
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the pan.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten and starch network that gives the pancake its body.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and sets the batter's thickness and moisture.
Butter
Greases the pan and adds fat for browning and flavour.

The step that matters

Beat until smooth, then add milk gradually. Adding the liquid slowly while whisking prevents lumps, because dry flour clumps when hit by too much liquid at once. A smooth batter of the right thickness spreads evenly and cooks into a uniform pancake.

“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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