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Dessert

Currant Pancakes

Currant Pancakes are batter pancakes fried with currants, served with powdered sugar and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Currant Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Zest the lemon into the sugar and pound together.

  2. In a bowl, make a batter with the eggs, cream, clarified butter, salt, and flour until smooth.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour a little batter into a heated pan and sprinkle currants on top.

  2. Fry quickly until golden, then serve with powdered sugar and cream.

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

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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 give the pancakes structure as they set.
Flour
Provides the main structure of the batter once cooked.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, producing a tender pancake.
Clarified butter
Adds fat for flavour and helps the pancakes brown in the pan.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pancakes brown while frying.

The step that matters

Fry quickly until golden. Over-high heat or long cooking can scorch the outside before the centre sets, while too little heat leaves the pancake pale and soft. A heated pan and a quick fry give an even golden colour from sugar and fat browning.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, egg, cream, 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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