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Dessert

Shrove Tuesday Pancakes

A batter of eggs, flour, milk, butter, and currants fried in lard to make pancakes.

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 ↓

Shrove Tuesday Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add the flour, milk, cream (or additional milk), melted butter, and salt, then mix until smooth.

  3. Fold in the currants just before frying.

Fry

  1. Heat lard in a pan over medium-high heat.

  2. Pour batter into the hot lard and fry until golden brown on both sides.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during frying.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the pancakes body and structure.
Milk
Supplies liquid that hydrates the flour and makes the batter pourable.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richer flavor and a tender texture.
Currants
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy fruit flavor throughout the pancakes.

The step that matters

Fry in hot lard. The lard must be hot before the batter goes in so the surface sets and browns quickly. A cool pan lets the batter spread and absorb fat, producing greasy, pale pancakes.

Swap the currant

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

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

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