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Glasgow Pancakes

A pancake batter made with flour, sugar, lard, eggs, and milk, cooked on a hot plate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk 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 ↓

Glasgow Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Rub the lard into the sugar until very fine.

  2. Add the eggs and beat together with the lard and sugar.

  3. Mix in the prepared flour and 1½ cups of milk to form a slack batter.

Cook

  1. Spoon the batter onto a hot plate and cook.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Flour and milk 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

Prepared flour
Provides the structure that holds the pancakes together as the batter sets.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the lard blend into a fine, tender mixture.
Lard
Adds fat that keeps the pancakes tender and gives a rich flavour.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure and richness as they set on the hot plate.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the flour into a slack batter that spreads on the plate.

The step that matters

Spoon the batter onto a hot plate and cook. The plate must be hot enough to set the batter quickly, so the pancakes stay light and do not soak up fat. If it is too hot, the outside browns before the centre sets.

“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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