Name: Pancakes
Ingredients: 4 apples (boiling kind, not finely minced); 3 eggs; 3 tablespoons flour; 1 to 1½ cups milk; butter (for greasing); sugar (for serving); apricot preserve (optional); clotted cream (optional)

Why it works: Apple and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 777 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓

Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, mix the eggs, flour, and milk to create a batter. Thin it with an extra egg or a little milk if needed.
Heat a pan over medium heat and grease it with butter.
Pour enough batter into the pan to cover the bottom thinly. Cook until set, then flip if necessary.
Keep pancakes warm in a low oven until ready to serve.
Serve pancakes stacked with sugar between layers or spread with apricot preserve and roll them up.
Optionally, serve with clotted cream.

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.

Apple + apricottop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together777 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the apricot

The recipe marks apricot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, egg, flour, milk, butter, sugar, cream):

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits about as well
Figfits about as well
Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, egg, flour, milk, butter, sugar, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.