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Breakfast

Plain Pancakes

A simple batter of flour, milk, eggs, salt, sugar, and butter cooked into pancakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Plain Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Whisk flour, milk, eggs, salt, and sugar together in a bowl until smooth.

Cook the pancakes

  1. Heat a frying pan over medium heat and add butter.

  2. Pour enough batter to cover the bottom of the pan.

  3. Cook until the edges lift and the top turns opaque, then flip the pancake.

  4. Cook the other side until golden brown, then transfer to a hot dish.

Serve

  1. Serve flat or sprinkle with sugar and roll; add jam, stewed fruit, or honey as 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pancake together as it sets.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter set firmly when cooked.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture, giving the batter its pourable consistency.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during cooking.
Butter
Adds fat for flavour and helps prevent sticking and promote golden browning in the pan.

The step that matters

Cook until the edges lift and the top turns opaque before flipping. Flipping too early leaves the uncooked batter to tear or smear, because the surface has not yet set enough to hold its shape. Waiting for the edges to lift and the top to dry out signals that the structure is firm enough to turn.

“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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