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Crepes

A thin batter of butter and flour cooked in a pan and served with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Crepes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter and let it settle, then decant it.

  2. Pour 1 tablespoon of melted butter into a pancake pan and warm it.

  3. Add 2 tablespoons of flour paste to the pan and spread it evenly.

  4. Once the paste firms up, turn the pan to release the crepe.

  5. Toss the crepe to flip it, then transfer it to a warm dish.

  6. Sift powdered sugar over the crepe and repeat with remaining batter.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and greases the pan so the crepe releases and browns lightly.
Flour
Forms the batter paste that sets into the thin body of the crepe.

The step that matters

Turn the pan to release the crepe. Flip only once the paste has firmed up. If it is still wet, it tears or sticks, because the flour has not yet set into a sheet that lifts free from the pan.

“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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