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Dessert

Pink-coloured Pancakes

A sweet pancake made with beetroot, eggs, flour, cream, nutmeg, sugar, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beetroot and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pink-coloured Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Boil the beetroot until tender.

  2. Bruise the beetroot in a mortar.

  3. Mix in the egg yolks, flour, cream, nutmeg, sugar, and brandy thoroughly.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the mixture well in a pan.

  2. Serve the pancakes garnished with green sweetmeats, preserved apricots, or sprigs of myrtle.

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. Beetroot + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together124 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beetroot + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together515 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beetroot
Provides the bulk, colour and earthy sweetness of the pancakes.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and help it set firm when fried.
Flour
Adds structure so the batter holds together in the pan.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the pancakes tender.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pancakes brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Frying the mixture well. The batter must be cooked through so the egg yolks and flour set. Undercooked egg proteins stay runny and the pancakes fall apart.

Swap the beetroot

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Beetrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, cream, nutmeg, sugar, brandy. 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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