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French Griddle-cakes

A batter of eggs, flour, butter, sugar, and milk is cooked on a griddle and served with jelly and 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. Whisk eggs and flour together until smooth.

  2. Melt the butter.

  3. Add the melted butter to the batter along with the sugar and milk. Beat until smooth.

Cook and serve

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

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

  3. Fry until light brown.

  4. Spread with jelly.

  5. Roll up the pancake.

  6. 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 add structure to the thin pancakes as they set.
Flour
Provides the main structure of the batter once it is set by heat.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the pancakes a softer texture and flavour.
Milk
Thins the batter to a pourable consistency and adds moisture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pancakes brown lightly in the pan.

The step that matters

Fry until light brown. Cooking over medium heat in a lightly greased pan lets the batter set and brown evenly. Too high a heat scorches the outside before the centre sets, and too little fat can make the pancake stick and tear when rolled.

“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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