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Pancakes and Fritters

A batter of eggs, flour, milk, nutmeg, and salt is cooked into pancakes, with apple fritters made by dipping sliced apples in batter and frying.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,230 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Pancakes and Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Break the eggs into a bowl and beat them with nutmeg and salt.

  2. Add flour and enough milk to create a smooth batter, thick as good cream.

  3. Add 1 more spoonful of flour.

Cook the pancakes

  1. Heat a clean frying pan.

  2. Add a walnut-sized piece of butter.

  3. Once melted, pour in enough batter to cover the bottom of the pan, about ½ inch thick.

  4. Fry until light brown on both sides.

Make the fritters

  1. Peel and slice apples.

  2. Core them.

  3. Dip in batter.

  4. Fry in hot lard.

  5. Drain on a sieve.

  6. Sprinkle with grated loaf 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. Nutmeg + walnuttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 help it set firm when cooked.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pancake and fritter batter together.
Milk
Thins the flour and eggs into a smooth, pourable batter.
Butter
Greases the pan and adds rich flavour and light browning to the pancakes.
Apples
Provide fruit flavour and moist, tender filling inside the batter-coated fritters.

The step that matters

Fry until light brown on both sides. Batter cooks through and sets only over moderate heat. Too hot and the outside browns and burns before the centre sets; too cool and the pancake stays pale, soft and greasy.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, nutmeg, flour, milk, butter, walnut, sugar. 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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