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Dessert

French Griddle-cakes

A sweet batter of eggs, flour, butter, sugar, and milk is fried into thin cakes, spread with jelly, rolled, and dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

French Griddle-cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs and flour together until smooth.

  2. Melt the butter and add it to the batter along with the sugar and milk; mix until smooth.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a lightly greased frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Pour a tablespoon of batter into the pan, tilting to spread evenly.

  3. Fry until light brown, then spread with jelly, roll up, and dust with powdered sugar before serving hot.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  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
Bind the batter and give the thin pancakes structure as they set.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the batter body and holds the pancake together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that helps the pancakes brown and taste rich.
Milk
Thins the batter to a pourable consistency and adds moisture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during frying.

The step that matters

Tilting the pan to spread the batter. A tablespoon of thin batter must be spread quickly and evenly across the pan so the pancake cooks at a uniform thickness. Thick spots stay doughy while thin edges scorch.

“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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