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Common Pancakes

A simple batter of eggs, flour, sugar, ginger, milk, and butter cooked into golden pancakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Common Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of flour for each egg.

  3. Mix in sugar and ginger to taste.

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

Cook the pancakes

  1. Heat a small frying pan and melt a little butter in it.

  2. Pour out the excess butter and add batter to the pan.

  3. Cook until golden brown on both sides.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 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 help the pancakes set with structure.
Flour
Provides structure and thickens the batter as it cooks.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the flour into a pourable batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown.
Butter
Adds fat for frying, promoting browning and rich flavor.

The step that matters

Cook until golden brown on both sides. Browning comes from the surface reaching a high enough temperature while the batter sets. If the pan is too hot, the outside darkens before the inside cooks through; if too cool, the pancake absorbs butter and turns pale and greasy.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, sugar, 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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