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 ↓
Pancakes
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
Beat the eggs and stir them into the milk.
Mix flour with a little of the milk to form a batter.
Fry and serve
Heat clarified butter or lard in a clean pan, then wipe the pan with a cloth and add more fat.
Pour batter into the pan and fry until light brown.
Drain pancakes from fat and serve immediately with sugar.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 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
- Bind the batter and add richness and structure to the cooked pancakes.
- Milk
- Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and gives the batter its moisture.
- Flour
- Forms the starch and gluten network that gives the pancakes their body.
- Clarified butter or lard
- Conducts heat in the pan and adds fat that helps the pancakes brown.
The step that matters
Wiping the pan and adding fresh fat before frying. Leftover milk solids and fat residue can burn and darken the pancakes unevenly, so a clean pan with fresh fat gives an even light brown color.
“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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