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To Make Good Pancakes

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Make Good Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, egg whites, cream or milk, sack, sugar, melted butter, flour, nutmeg, and salt until smooth.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a frying pan and pour in enough batter to make one pancake.

  2. Shake the pan; when one side is golden, flip the pancake and cook the other side.

  3. Remove the pancake and repeat with the remaining batter.

  4. Serve with sugar sprinkled on top.

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

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

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Butter and flour 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter while adding tenderness.
Egg whites
Add lift and a light, airy structure to the pancakes.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pancakes together when cooked.
Cream or milk
Supplies liquid that hydrates the flour and keeps the pancakes moist.
Melted butter
Adds fat for flavor and a tender texture, and helps the surface brown.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cooked surface brown golden.

The step that matters

Flipping when one side is golden. Flipping too early, before the underside has set, can tear or collapse the pancake. Waiting for a golden color shows the base has firmed enough to turn cleanly.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, sherry, sugar, butter, 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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