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Fine Pancakes, Fried Without Butter or Lard

A batter of eggs, cream, sugar, wine, nutmeg, lemon rind, and flour is fried into thin pancakes without butter or lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fine Pancakes, Fried Without Butter or Lard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs extremely well.

  2. Mix the eggs with the cream, sugar, wine, grated nutmeg, grated lemon rind, and enough flour to make a batter slightly thicker than ordinary pancake batter.

Cook

  1. Heat a frying pan until hot and wipe it with a clean cloth.

  2. Pour in the batter to make thin 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 + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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, and help the batter set as it cooks.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, giving the pancakes a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pancakes brown lightly in the pan.
Flour
Thickens the batter and gives the pancakes their body and structure.
Wine
Adds acidity and flavour to the batter.

The step that matters

Wiping the hot pan. The pan must be hot but clean, so the thin batter sets quickly without sticking or leaving residue that would scorch and darken the pancakes.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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