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Breakfast

Pancakes

A batter of flour, milk, eggs, salt, and butter cooked into thin cakes, served with sugar.

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

Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the flour with the milk gradually until smooth.

  2. Beat the yolks of the eggs.

  3. Stir the beaten yolks into the batter.

  4. Add a pinch of salt.

  5. Beat the egg whites until frothy.

  6. Gently fold the beaten whites into the batter.

Prepare the butter

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan.

  2. Pour the melted butter into a bowl.

  3. For each pancake, use 2 teaspoons of the melted butter.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat the pan.

  2. Pour 4 tablespoons of batter into the pan, spreading it thinly.

  3. Cook over medium heat until the bottom is brown and the top is set.

  4. Toss the pancake to brown the other side.

  5. Slide the pancake onto a dish.

  6. Sprinkle the pancake with sugar.

  7. Fold the pancake into an oval shape.

  8. Keep warm while frying the remaining pancakes.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

White flour
Forms the structure of the batter once hydrated with milk.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and creates a smooth, pourable batter.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and whites are folded in to lighten the batter's texture.
Butter
Adds fat for flavour and helps the pancake brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten whites gently. Deflating the whitened egg foam by vigorous stirring removes the air that lightens the batter, leaving 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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