Skip to main content
Dessert

Russian Pancakes

A light, sweet batter of butter, sugar, flour, milk, and eggs is baked into thin pancakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Russian Pancakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Separate the yolks from the whites of the eggs.

  2. Beat the yolks with the sugar.

  3. Add the flour and milk to the yolk mixture.

  4. Beat the egg whites lightly and fold them into the mixture.

Bake and finish

  1. Butter 5 saucers and pour some of the mixture into each.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 20 minutes.

  3. Once baked, remove the pancakes from the saucers and spread a little jam in the center of each.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Yolks enrich the batter and whites, folded in lightly, give the pancakes lift and a tender crumb.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the pancakes brown and release from the saucers.
Flour
Provides structure so the batter sets into a pancake rather than spreading thin.
Sweet milk
Supplies liquid that hydrates the flour and gives the batter a soft, pourable texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pancakes brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites should be beaten only lightly and folded gently so their trapped air is kept. Overmixing deflates the foam, leaving the blini dense instead of tender and light.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes