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Breakfast

Common Pancakes

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Common Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the eggs, flour, and milk to create a light batter.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a small pan and add hot dripping or lard.

  2. Pour the batter into the pan and fry until golden brown.

  3. Serve with sugar and lemon.

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 + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Ginger + beertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together210 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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 help give the pancakes structure and a light lift as they set.
Flour
Forms the main structure as its starches set when the batter cooks.
Milk
Adds moisture and thins the batter so it spreads and cooks evenly.

The step that matters

Heat the pan before pouring in the batter. A hot pan with hot fat sets the outside of the batter quickly, so the pancake browns evenly and does not soak up grease or stick. A cool pan makes pale, greasy, or torn pancakes.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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