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Dessert

Apple Pancake

A batter of flour, eggs, milk, apples, and sugar cooked in lard or butter, served hot with sugar, lemon juice, and optional cinnamon.

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

Apple Pancake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Prepare a batter by mixing the flour, eggs, and half the milk.

  2. Mince the apples very finely and mix them into the batter with the remaining milk.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat lard or butter in a pan and pour in the batter to form pancakes.

  2. Cook until golden brown on both sides.

  3. Serve hot.

  4. Sprinkle with sugar and lemon juice.

  5. Dust with cinnamon if desired.

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. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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
Bind the batter and help set the pancakes as they cook.
Flour
Forms the structure of the batter so the pancakes hold together.
Apples
Add moisture and fruity flavour to the batter as they cook.
Lard or butter
Fat for the pan that helps the pancakes brown and release easily.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form a pourable batter.

The step that matters

Cook until golden brown on both sides. Pancakes need enough heat and time for the surface to brown and the centre to set. Flipping too early can tear them and leave the inside raw.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, lemon, butter, milk, 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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