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Apple Pancakes

A batter of flour, sugar, butter, eggs, cream, cinnamon, lemon peel, and apples, fried into pancakes and served with wine or jelly sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Apple Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Make a batter by creaming the butter and mixing in flour and sugar.

  2. Add egg yolks and lukewarm cream to the batter.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the batter.

  4. Stir in powdered cinnamon and finely chopped lemon peel.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry pancakes on one side only, stacking them with sugar and cinnamon between each.

  2. Cut the stack downwards like a cake and serve with wine or jelly sauce.

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 + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Beaten until stiff, they trap air and lighten the batter for a tender texture.
Egg yolks
Add richness and structure to the batter as it sets during frying.
Butter
Creamed with the sugar, it adds richness and tenderness to the batter.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pancakes together.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, loosening the batter.

The step that matters

Fry pancakes on one side only. Cooking only one side keeps the pancakes soft and lets them be stacked; the uncooked top is set by the stacking and layering. Heat must be moderate so the bottom browns without burning before the batter sets.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, egg, cream, cinnamon, lemon. 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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