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Fine Pancakes

A light pancake made with eggs, cream, butter, rice flour, and optional sweeteners and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fine Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add the cream and butter, mixing well.

  3. Incorporate the rice flour gradually.

  4. Sweeten with sugar and season with nutmeg, cinnamon, or lemon as desired.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a pan and add a small piece of butter until it froths.

  2. Pour a ladleful of batter into the pan, swirling to spread evenly.

  3. Use a knife to loosen the edges and flip the pancake.

  4. Brown lightly on both sides, then keep warm.

  5. Serve hot, sprinkled with sugar and accompanied by sliced 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  5. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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 set the pancake structure as it cooks.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the pancakes a tender texture.
Butter
Adds fat for flavor and helps the pancake brown in the pan.
Rice flour
Provides the starch that forms the body of the pancake, without gluten.

The step that matters

Pour and swirl the batter. A ladleful spread thinly and evenly sets quickly and cooks through; too much batter or uneven spreading leaves thick, gummy, or unevenly cooked areas that are hard to flip cleanly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, butter, rice, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, butter, rice, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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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