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American Pancakes

A thin batter pancake made with eggs, flour, milk, butter, cinnamon, and sugar, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

American Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the yolks of 4 eggs and the whites of 2 eggs with 2 tablespoons of water and a pinch of salt.

  2. Gradually add 6 heaped tablespoons of flour and beat until smooth.

  3. Add enough new milk to make a thin batter.

Cook the pancakes

  1. Melt 1 egg-sized piece of butter in an omelet pan without browning it.

  2. Pour in enough batter to thinly cover the pan and let it stiffen.

  3. Loosen the edges and shake the pan to prevent sticking.

  4. Flip the pancake to brown both sides.

Serve

  1. Serve stacked on a dish, sprinkled with pounded cinnamon and sifted sugar, cut into quarters, and serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Yolks and whites set the batter's structure and give the thin pancake its body.
Flour
Starch forms the batter's structure, so the pancake holds together when flipped.
New milk
Adds liquid that thins the batter so it spreads into a thin pancake.
Butter
Fat in the pan keeps the pancake from sticking and adds flavor and light browning.

The step that matters

Flip the pancake to brown both sides. The pancake must be set enough to hold together when flipped, and the pan should be kept from browning too fast so the inside cooks through without burning.

“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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