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Pancakes

A simple batter of flour, eggs, butter, salt, and nutmeg, fried into pancakes and served with pounded sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Pancakes

Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix flour, eggs, melted butter, salt, and nutmeg until smooth.

Fry

  1. Heat a frying pan.

  2. Add a small amount of butter to the pan, then pour the butter out and wipe the pan dry.

  3. Add a small bit of butter to the pan for the first pancake.

  4. Fry the rest of the batter without adding more butter.

Serve

  1. Serve pancakes with pounded sugar sprinkled on top.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and give the pancakes structure as they set.
Flour
Forms the structure of the batter as its starches set on cooking.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat to the batter, tenderising the pancakes.

The step that matters

Fry the rest of the batter without adding more butter. The batter already contains melted butter, and the pan is greased for the first pancake. Adding more fat for each pancake can make them greasy, while the pan must stay hot enough for the batter to set quickly and brown lightly.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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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