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Cream Pancakes

A thin pancake made with eggs, heavy cream, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, mace, and fried in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cream Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Mix in the cream, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, and mace until well combined.

Fry the pancakes

  1. Heat a pan and rub it with a bit of butter.

  2. Pour a small amount of batter into the pan and fry the pancakes thin until golden brown.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks add richness and help bind the batter together.
Heavy cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the pancakes a tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pancakes brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Fry the pancakes thin until golden brown. Pouring a small amount of batter keeps the pancakes thin so they cook through evenly. Moderate heat and a buttered pan let the sugar in the batter brown gradually without scorching before the centre sets.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

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