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Dessert

A Thick Pancake

A thick pancake made with eggs, flour, sugar, wine, cream, and served with preserve and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter 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 ↓

A Thick Pancake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Separate the yolks and whites of the eggs.

  2. Mix the yolks with flour, sugar, white wine, and cream or milk.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat butter or clarified suet in a broad saucepan.

  2. Pour the batter into the pan and cook until browned on one side.

  3. Warm your choice of preserve and spread it on one half of the pancake.

  4. Fold the other half over the preserve and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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
Whites beaten and folded in give the pancake a light, airy structure, while yolks add richness.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the batter body and hold the pancake together.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown in the pan.
White wine
Adds acidity and liquid to the batter, adding flavour as it thins the mixture.
Cream or milk
Adds liquid and fat, making the batter tender and moist.
Butter or clarified suet
Fat for the pan that conducts heat and browns the pancake's surface.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the whites, which is what lifts the thick pancake. Stirring vigorously deflates them and leaves a dense result.

“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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