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Dessert

Indian Pancake

A sweet rice pancake flavored with cinnamon, topped with cherries and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Indian Pancake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Boil the rice in the milk and mash it to a pulp.

  2. Beat the eggs well and add them along with the cinnamon flavoring.

  3. Form the mixture into a flat, round cake.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the cake on one side only in butter for 7 to 8 minutes.

  2. Transfer to a hot dish and garnish with neat pieces of ginger and cherries.

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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set into a cake when cooked.
Rice
Cooked and mashed into a pulp, it gives the cake body and a soft texture.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to form a moist base for the batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown on the frying side.

The step that matters

Fry the cake on one side only. Frying over moderate heat in butter for the full 7 to 8 minutes lets the underside set and brown before the cake is handled. Cooking it too fast or flipping it early can leave the centre raw or the cake to break apart.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Clovefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, rice, sugar, cinnamon, 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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