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Dessert

Apple Pancakes

A batter of eggs, milk, flour, sugar, baking powder, and minced apple, fried into pancakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Apple Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs well.

  2. Add the milk and gradually stir in flour to make a smooth batter, about the consistency of thick cream.

  3. Add the sugar and let it stand for 1 hour or more.

  4. Stir in the apple and baking powder.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry in a hot buttered pan until golden brown.

  2. Dust with sugar and serve.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 and richness to the pancakes.
Flour
Forms the batter's structure, setting into the body of the pancake when cooked.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the pancakes rise and become light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture and tenderness to the batter.
Apple
Adds moisture, fruity flavour and tender pieces throughout the pancake.

The step that matters

Fry in a hot buttered pan. A pan that is too cool lets the batter soak in and spread before it sets, giving pale, greasy pancakes. A properly hot pan sets the surface quickly and browns it through the Maillard reaction.

Swap the apple

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

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

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