Why it works: Egg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Snow Pancakes
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
In a bowl, mix flour with enough water to create a thick batter.
Cook the pancakes
Just before cooking each pancake, fold in 2 tablespoons of fresh snow.
Heat a skillet over medium heat and pour in the batter to form pancakes.
Cook until golden brown on both sides.
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.
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
- Flour
- Forms the body of the batter and sets into the pancake structure as it cooks.
- Fresh snow
- Stands in for the egg, adding moisture and loosening the batter.
The step that matters
Fold in the snow just before cooking. Snow melts into water on contact, so adding it late keeps the batter from thinning too much before it reaches the hot skillet.
“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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