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Pancakes

A batter of eggs, milk, and flour is fried in lard and served with sugar and lemon or Seville orange juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Pancakes

Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

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

Cook

  1. Heat hot lard in a pan.

  2. Pour a thin layer of batter into the pan and fry until the bottom is golden.

  3. Carefully toss the pancake to flip it and cook the other side.

Serve

  1. Serve with sugar and lemon juice or Seville orange juice.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 help set the pancake structure as it cooks.
Milk
Loosens the batter to a pourable consistency and adds moisture.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten that form the pancake's body.

The step that matters

Pour a thin layer of batter and fry until golden. A thin layer cooks through evenly and sets quickly, while a thick pour can stay raw in the middle or burn on the outside before it sets. Golden browning comes from the Maillard reaction on the hot pan surface.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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