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Pancakes, or Batter Fried

A batter of eggs, flour, milk, and spices fried into pancakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,324 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pancakes, or Batter Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the eggs, flour, milk, salt, nutmeg, and ginger until smooth.

  2. If desired, mix half the fat into the batter for lighter pancakes.

Fry

  1. Heat the fat in a frying pan until it is hot.

  2. Pour the batter into the hot fat, making pancakes the size you prefer.

  3. Fry until both sides are a fine pale brown.

Serve

  1. Serve on a drainer with fine moist sugar, lemon or orange juice, or vinegar.

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. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 add structure as they set when fried.
Flour
Provides the starch that thickens the batter and gives the pancakes body.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it spreads into thin pancakes.
Fat
Conducts heat in the pan and helps the pancakes brown evenly on both sides.

The step that matters

Fry until both sides are a fine pale brown. The pan must be hot before the batter goes in, so the pancakes set quickly. Frying too long or too hot darkens the outside before the centre cooks through.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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