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Breakfast

Pancakes

Apple pancakes made with apples, flour, milk, butter, served with sugar, preserve, or clotted cream.

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

Why it works: Apple and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 777 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓

Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Finely mince the apples.

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour and milk to create a batter.

  3. Heat a pan over medium heat and grease it with butter.

Cook

  1. Pour enough batter into the pan to cover the bottom thinly.

  2. Cook until the pancake is set.

  3. Do not flip the pancake if it is very thin.

  4. Keep pancakes warm until ready to serve.

Serve

  1. Serve stacked with sugar between layers or spread with preserve and roll up.

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. Apple + apricottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Gives the batter body so the pancake holds together when cooked.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that turns the flour into a pourable batter and keeps the pancake moist.
Apples
Add fruit flavour and moisture to the pancake.
Butter
Greases the pan to prevent sticking and adds a rich flavour and light browning.

The step that matters

Cook until the pancake is set before doing anything else. A very thin pancake has little structure. Egg-free batter sets as its starches and proteins firm with heat, so it must be fully set before it is moved or flipped, otherwise it tears.

Swap the apricot

The recipe marks apricot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, flour, milk, butter, sugar, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, flour, milk, butter, sugar, cream. 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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