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Dessert

Plinsen — Thin Pancakes

Thin pancakes made from flour, eggs, butter, sugar, salt, and cream or milk, layered with sugar and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Plinsen — Thin Pancakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, eggs, warmed butter, salt, sugar, and enough cream or milk to make a thin batter.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a frying pan and pour in a small amount of batter, frying until the pancake is pale brown on both sides.

  2. Stack the pancakes with sugar and cinnamon or other spices between each layer.

  3. Sprinkle sugar on top and glaze with a salamander or hot iron.

  4. 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the thin pancake together.
Eggs
Add structure and help the thin batter set when cooked.
Warmed butter
Adds fat for flavour and a tender texture.
Cream or milk
Thins the batter to a pourable consistency and adds moisture.

The step that matters

Frying until pale brown on both sides. A small amount of batter in a hot pan spreads thinly and sets quickly, so the pancake cooks through before it browns too much or tears when flipped.

“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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