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Batter Pancakes

A simple batter pancake made with eggs, flour, milk, salt, sugar, ginger, cinnamon, and fried in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Batter Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add the flour and mix well.

  3. Stir in the milk and salt.

  4. Sweeten and season with sugar, ginger, and cinnamon.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat butter in a frying pan.

  2. Pour in 1½ cups of batter and cook until golden brown on one side.

  3. Flip the pancake by holding the other side before the fire.

  4. Serve hot, quartered.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon 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
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during cooking.
Flour
Provides the starch that gives the pancake its body and structure.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a pourable consistency.
Butter
Fat for the pan that helps the surface brown and keeps the pancake from sticking.

The step that matters

Cook until golden brown on one side before flipping. Flipping too early tears the pancake because the underside has not yet set. Cooking on medium heat until bubbles form and the surface firms lets the structure hold, and the browned side gives better color and flavor.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, milk, sugar, cinnamon, butter. 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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