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Dessert

Apple Pancakes

A batter of flour, sugar, butter, egg yolks, cream, apples, cinnamon, and lemon peel is fried into pancakes and served with wine or jelly sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Apple Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Make a batter by creaming the butter and mixing in flour and sugar.

  2. Stir in the egg yolks and lukewarm cream until well combined.

Cook and serve

  1. Add chopped apples to the batter each time you take a pancake from it.

  2. Fry the pancakes on one side only, stacking them in a pile with sugar and cinnamon between each.

  3. Cut the stack downwards like a cake and serve with wine or jelly sauce.

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. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

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

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

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

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter together as it sets in the pan.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter while adding structure when cooked.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, creaming it with sugar traps air for a tender texture.
Apples
Add moisture and a fruity sweetness that bakes softly into the pancakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the pancakes brown lightly at the surface.

The step that matters

Fry the pancakes on one side only. Cooking one side keeps the pancakes soft and thick, and the stacked layers stay moist. Cooking too hot can scorch the base before the batter sets through.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, egg, cream, butter, cinnamon, lemon. 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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