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Very Rich Pancakes

A buttery, sweet pancake made with cream, eggs, brandy, and spices, served with lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Very Rich Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Gradually add the cream or milk and loaf sugar, mixing well.

  3. Beat the eggs and mix in the brandy or ratafia.

  4. Combine the flour, salt, and nutmeg in a separate bowl.

  5. Mix the egg mixture into the flour mixture until smooth.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a clean frying pan and grease it lightly with butter.

  2. Pour batter into the pan and fry the pancakes on one side only.

  3. Stack the pancakes with fine sugar sprinkled between each.

  4. Transfer to a serving dish with the browned side facing up.

  5. Garnish with lemon slices.

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 + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Creamed with the sugar to give the pancakes a rich, tender body.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as the pancakes set.
Fine flour
Forms the main structure of the pancakes as the batter sets in the pan.
Cream or rich milk
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the pancakes soft and tender.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the pancakes brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Fry the pancakes on one side only. Cooking on one side lets the underside brown while the top sets lightly. Flipping or over-browning can toughen the pancake, and the browned side is the one shown when served.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, sugar, egg, brandy, flour, 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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