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Breakfast

Pancakes and Jam

A batter of milk, flour, eggs, and lemon peel is fried into pancakes, then dredged in sugar and served with jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pancakes and Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the milk, flour, salt, ratafias, eggs, and grated lemon peel.

  2. Mix the ingredients well until smooth.

Cook the pancakes

  1. Heat a skillet over medium heat and add a little oil or butter.

  2. Pour spoonfuls of the batter into the skillet and fry until golden brown on both sides.

  3. Remove the pancakes and place them on a drainer to remove excess grease.

Finish and serve

  1. Dredge sugar inside each pancake and spread jam between them before serving.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 set the pancakes as they cook.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the pancakes together.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and loosens the batter to a pourable consistency.
Ratafias
Add almond-like aroma and sweetness to the batter.

The step that matters

Frying until golden brown on both sides. Cooking over medium heat lets the centre set before the outside browns too far. Too much heat scorches the surface while the inside stays raw and wet.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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