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Breakfast

Common Pancakes

A batter of eggs, milk, flour, salt, and nutmeg is fried into pancakes served hot with lemon and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Common Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Stir in the milk.

  3. Add salt and enough flour to create a thick, smooth batter.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat oil in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Pour batter into the pan and fry for about 5 minutes, flipping until golden brown.

  3. Serve hot with lemon and sugar.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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 add structure as they set during frying.
Milk
Thins the batter to a pourable consistency and adds moisture.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the batter body and structure.

The step that matters

Frying the pancakes. Medium heat lets the centre cook through before the outside browns too far. Too hot a pan browns the surface quickly while the inside stays raw.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, 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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