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Breakfast

Plain Pancakes

A simple batter of flour, milk, eggs, nutmeg, and lemon peel, fried into golden pancakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Plain Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the flour, nutmeg, and lemon peel.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix half of the milk with the flour mixture.

  3. In another bowl, beat the eggs with the remaining milk.

  4. Combine all mixtures and beat well, adding more milk if necessary to achieve a thick batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat a pan and melt a bit of butter.

  2. Pour batter into the pan and fry until golden brown, flipping as needed.

  3. If desired, sprinkle sugar between pancakes as you fry them.

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 + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the pancakes their body.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter set and hold together when cooked.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and loosens the batter to a pourable, thick consistency.
Butter
Fat for frying that promotes even browning and adds flavor to the pancake surface.

The step that matters

Pour batter into the pan and fry until golden brown, flipping as needed. Medium heat is needed so the outside browns as the inside cooks through. Too high a heat scorches the surface while the center stays raw and doughy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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