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Pancakes

A simple egg and milk batter pancakes flavored with ginger, cooked in butter and served with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Pancakes

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

  1. Beat the eggs, leaving out half the whites, and stir into the milk.

  2. Mix the flour with some of the milk, then gradually add the rest.

  3. Add the ginger and salt, and stir the mixture together.

Cook and serve

  1. Melt a piece of butter in a skillet, then pour in enough batter to make a pancake.

  2. Move the pan to spread the batter evenly, then shake the pan.

  3. When one side is browned, flip the pancake to brown the other side.

  4. Drain off excess fat before serving, and serve immediately with sugar sprinkled on top.

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.

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.

  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
Add structure and richness, helping the pancakes hold together as they set.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that hydrates the flour and makes the batter pourable.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten and starch network that gives the pancakes their body.
Butter
Adds fat for frying and helps the surface brown and taste rich.

The step that matters

Flip when the first side is browned. Flipping too early tears the still-liquid center, while waiting too long dries the pancake and over-browns it. The surface must be set and golden before turning.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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