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Breakfast

Sweet Pancakes

A batter of eggs, milk, flour, sugar, salt, and oil cooked on a griddle and served with butter and jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Sweet Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine flour, egg yolks, salt, and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Gradually beat in the milk until a smooth batter forms.

  3. Lightly beat the egg whites.

  4. Fold the beaten egg whites into the batter.

  5. Add the oil to the batter.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook on a hot griddle in large or small cakes as desired.

  2. Spread each pancake with butter and a little jam or jelly.

  3. Roll the pancakes up.

  4. Sprinkle with sugar.

  5. Serve immediately.

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. 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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Eggs
Whites trapped by folding add lift and a light, airy texture to the batter.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the pancake together as it cooks.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture and tenderness to the batter.
Salad oil
Adds fat that keeps the pancakes tender and helps prevent sticking.

The step that matters

Fold the beaten egg whites into the batter. Folding gently keeps the air in the whites. Stirring vigorously deflates them, which makes the pancakes denser and flatter.

“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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