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Breakfast

Fine Pancakes, Fried Without Butter or Lard

A thin pancake made from eggs, cream, sugar, wine, nutmeg, and flour, fried without butter or lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fine Pancakes, Fried Without Butter or Lard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs extremely well, then strain them.

  2. Mix the strained eggs with cream, sugar, wine, and grated nutmeg.

  3. Add enough flour to make a batter slightly thicker than ordinary pancake batter.

Cook the pancakes

  1. Heat a frying pan until hot and wipe it with a clean cloth.

  2. Pour in the batter to make thin pancakes.

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. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  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).

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

Eggs
Provide structure and richness, setting the pancakes as they cook.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the pancakes a tender texture and moisture.
Flour
Provides starch and structure, thickening the batter so it holds together when cooked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pancakes brown lightly in the pan.

The step that matters

Add enough flour to make a batter slightly thicker than ordinary pancake batter.. Flour thickens the batter by absorbing liquid and forming structure. Too little leaves the pancakes thin and fragile, while too much makes them dense and stiff.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

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