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Breakfast

Pancakes and Fritters

A batter of eggs, flour and milk, fried in butter as thin pancakes, with an apple fritter variation.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Pancakes and Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Break the eggs into a bowl and beat them with nutmeg and salt.

  2. Add flour and enough milk to create a smooth batter, thick as good cream.

Cook the pancakes

  1. Heat a clean frying pan and add a walnut-sized piece of butter.

  2. Once melted, pour in enough batter to cover the bottom of the pan, about ½ inch thick.

  3. Fry until light brown on both sides.

Make and serve the fritters

  1. For apple fritters, add 1 tablespoon more flour, peel and slice apples, remove cores, dip in batter, and fry in hot lard.

  2. Drain on a sieve and sprinkle with grated loaf sugar.

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

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

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Nutmeg + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 add structure as they set in the pan.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the batter body and hold its shape.
Milk
Thins the flour and eggs to a smooth, pourable batter with moisture.
Butter
Greases the pan and adds richness and browning to the pancakes.
Apples
Provide fruity sweetness and moisture inside the batter-coated fritters.

The step that matters

Frying the pancakes in hot fat. The pan must be hot enough and the batter thick enough so the pancake sets and browns evenly on both sides; too cool a pan lets the batter spread and absorb fat, leaving it greasy and pale.

Swap the apple

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

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

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