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Indian Pancake

A sweet rice pancake made with milk, eggs, sugar, and cinnamon, garnished with cherries and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Indian Pancake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice mixture

  1. Boil the rice in the milk until soft.

  2. Mash the cooked rice to a pulp.

  3. Beat the eggs well.

  4. Mix the beaten eggs with the rice and cinnamon.

  5. Form the mixture into a flat, round cake.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the cake on one side only in butter until golden brown.

  2. Transfer the cake to a hot dish.

  3. Garnish with pieces of ginger and cherries.

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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Cooked and mashed to a pulp, it gives the cake its body and soft, thick texture.
Eggs
Beaten and mixed in, they bind the rice into a cohesive cake that sets when cooked.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to soften it and adds moisture to the mixture.
Butter
Fries the cake's surface, adding fat and helping it brown golden.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to browning on the frying side.

The step that matters

Fry on one side only until golden brown. The cake is cooked on one side only, so the heat must reach through the mixture without burning the surface. Moderate heat lets the sugars and proteins brown evenly while the egg sets inside.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Clovefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, rice, sugar, cinnamon, 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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