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Breakfast

Pancakes

A batter of eggs, milk, flour, ginger, and salt is fried into pancakes.

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

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Heat a frying pan and wipe it with clarified butter or sweet lard.

  2. Add more lard and heat until hot.

  3. Beat the eggs and stir them into the milk.

  4. Mix flour with some milk, then gradually add the rest.

  5. Add beaten ginger and salt, stirring to combine.

Fry and serve

  1. Pour a ladleful of batter into the pan, moving it to spread evenly.

  2. Fry until one side is brown, then turn to brown the other side.

  3. Drain off excess fat before serving.

  4. Serve pancakes warm with 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 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

Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter set and bind as it cooks.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and gives the batter its loose, pourable body.
Flour
Thickens the batter and forms the starch and protein network that sets the pancake.
Butter
Adds fat for frying, promoting even browning and a rich flavour.

The step that matters

Fry until one side is brown, then turn. Turning too early tears the pancake because the underside has not yet set. Wait until the edges look dry and the underside is golden before flipping, so the browning is even and the pancake holds together.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, flour, butter. 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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