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Breakfast

Common Pancakes

A batter of eggs, milk, and flour is fried into pancakes and served with vinegar, verjuice, or lemon and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Common Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pan

  1. Ensure the frying pan is clean.

  2. Rub lard or dripping around the inside of the pan and heat it.

  3. Wipe the pan with a clean cloth.

Make and cook the pancakes

  1. In a bowl, mix eggs, milk, and flour to create a light batter.

  2. When the fat is hot, pour in a ladle-full of batter.

  3. Tilt the pan to spread the batter evenly.

  4. Fry until golden brown on one side, then flip carefully.

  5. Once cooked on both sides, place on a hot dish.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately with vinegar, verjuice, or lemon and sugar.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Flour + vinegartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,652 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + vinegartop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,949 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 help set the pancake structure as it cooks.
Milk
Thins the batter to a pourable consistency and adds moisture to the pancake.
Flour
Provides the starch and structure that hold the pancake together when cooked.
Lard or dripping
Greases the pan so the pancake releases cleanly and browns in the frying.

The step that matters

Pouring and spreading the batter in hot fat. The fat must be hot before the batter goes in, so the batter sets quickly on contact. Tilting the pan spreads it thinly and evenly, which keeps the pancake from thickening unevenly or sticking in one spot.

“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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