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Breakfast

Pancakes

A batter of milk, flour, eggs, ginger, brandy, and salt is fried into thin pancakes and served with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Pancakes

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 ↓

Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour with the milk to create a thin batter.

  2. Beat the eggs well, omitting the whites of three, and mix them into the batter.

  3. Add the ginger, brandy, and salt to the batter and stir until combined.

Cook and serve

  1. Melt lard in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Pour enough batter into the pan to form a pancake about ¼ inch thick, ensuring it covers the bottom.

  3. Cook the pancake, shaking the pan occasionally to prevent sticking, until browned on one side.

  4. Flip the pancake to brown the other side.

  5. Serve the pancakes 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

Flour
Provides the starch and structure that hold the thin batter together as it cooks.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the pancake set and hold together when cooked.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that hydrates the flour and gives the batter its thin, pourable consistency.
Lard
Greases the pan so the pancake releases cleanly and browns evenly in the frying fat.

The step that matters

Pouring and cooking the pancake. The batter must be thin enough to spread across the pan's bottom, and the pan must be hot but not smoking. Shaking the pan helps prevent sticking, so the pancake browns evenly before it is flipped.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, egg, brandy, 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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