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To Make Pancakes and Fritters

A batter of eggs, milk, flour, ginger, brandy, and salt is fried into pancakes and served with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

To Make Pancakes and Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat 6 eggs well, leaving out half the whites, and mix with 1 quart of milk.

  2. Combine 2 cups of flour with a little of the milk, then gradually add the rest.

  3. Stir in 2 tablespoons of beaten ginger, ⅓ cup of brandy, and ¼ teaspoon of coarse sea salt.

Fry the pancakes

  1. Heat butter in a frying pan and pour in a ladleful of batter to form a pancake.

  2. Move the pan around to spread the batter evenly.

  3. Shake the pan and turn the pancake when one side is done.

  4. Once both sides are cooked, place the pancake in a dish and continue frying the remaining batter.

Serve

  1. Sprinkle a little sugar over the pancakes 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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Whites and yolks add structure and richness to the batter as it cooks.
All-purpose flour
Starch forms the body of the batter and sets the pancake as it cooks.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and gives the pancakes their tender texture.
Brandy
Adds alcohol-based aroma and flavour to the batter.
Beaten ginger
Contributes the main spiced, aromatic flavour to the pancakes.

The step that matters

Combine the flour with a little milk first. Mixing flour into a small amount of liquid before adding the rest helps prevent lumps, giving the batter a smooth, even consistency.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, flour, brandy, butter, 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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