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Dessert

Apple Pan Cakes

A batter of milk, eggs, flour, baking powder, and salt is cooked with sliced tart apples, served hot with butter and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Apple Pan Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs until light.

  2. Add the sweet milk, flour, baking powder, and salt; mix until smooth.

Cook the pancakes

  1. Heat butter and lard in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Pour batter into the pan to cover the bottom.

  3. Place thin slices of tart apples on top of the batter.

  4. Cook until golden brown on both sides.

  5. Transfer to a warm plate with the apples facing up.

Serve

  1. Spread butter and sprinkle sugar on each cake 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 add structure and richness as they set in the pan.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the pancakes their body.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to help the pancakes rise and turn light.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture and tenderness to the batter.
Tart apples
Add fruity acidity and moisture that contrasts with the sweet toppings.

The step that matters

Cook until golden brown on both sides. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction between sugars and proteins in the batter, which adds flavor and color. Cooking over medium heat lets the centre set before the outside burns.

Swap the apple

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

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

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