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Dessert

French Pancakes

A batter of flour, sugar, cream, milk, egg yolks, and butter is fried into thin pancakes and served with currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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French Pancakes

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

French Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix and beat flour, Ratafias, sugar, orange flower water, salt, cream, milk, egg yolks, and clarified butter for ten minutes.

Cook the crêpes

  1. Heat a bit of fresh butter in a frying pan, then pour enough batter to cover the bottom.

  2. Fry until golden, then turn onto a dish.

Finish and serve

  1. Sift sugar over the pancakes and glaze with a salamander.

  2. Serve with currant jelly on the side.

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

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and help the batter set firm and custard-like when cooked.
Flour
Provides structure so the batter holds together when cooked.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the crêpes a tender, soft texture.
Clarified butter
Adds fat for flavour and helps the crêpes brown and release from the pan.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown when glazed.

The step that matters

Fry until golden, then turn onto a dish.. Cook over steady heat so the crêpe sets and browns evenly without scorching. Too hot a pan browns the outside before the thin batter sets, while too cool a pan leaves it pale and tearing when turned.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Orangethe original

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