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Dessert

Pancakes LA Creme

A light, buttery pancake made with egg yolks, whites, cream, cinnamon, lemon, sugar, clarified butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Pancakes LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg yolks and whites separately, then strain into the cream.

  2. Pound the cinnamon and grated lemon with the sugar.

  3. Mix the cinnamon mixture with the clarified butter, then add the flour.

  4. Beat the batter until smooth.

Cook the pancakes

  1. Pour into a small hot pan rubbed with butter to make thin pancakes.

  2. Cook quickly until all pancakes are done, using no additional butter after the first.

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. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter for a tender pancake.
Egg whites
Beaten separately and folded in, they add lightness and help the pancakes rise.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the pancakes a soft, tender texture.
Clarified butter
Adds fat for flavour and helps the pancakes brown in the pan.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the thin pancakes together.

The step that matters

Cook quickly over a hot pan. A small, hot pan rubbed with butter sets the thin batter fast, so the pancakes brown lightly and stay tender. A cool pan lets them stick and dry out, and too much extra butter makes them greasy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, cinnamon, sugar, butter, flour. 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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