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Breakfast

Common Pancakes

A simple batter of eggs, flour, and milk cooked into pancakes, served with sugar and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Common Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, flour, and milk to make a light batter.

Cook the pancakes

  1. Heat a small pan over medium-high heat and add dripping or lard.

  2. Pour in the batter to form pancakes and cook until golden brown on both sides.

Serve

  1. Serve with sugar and lemon.

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 + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Ginger + beertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together210 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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 help set the pancakes as they cook.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten structure that holds the pancakes together.
Milk
Loosens the batter and adds moisture, while its sugars help the surface brown.

The step that matters

Watch the colour while the pancakes cook. At medium-high heat the milk sugars and proteins brown quickly, so the outside can scorch before the centre sets. Keep an eye on the colour as the pancakes cook.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, milk, nutmeg, ginger, sugar, beer. 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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