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Dessert

French Pancakes

A batter of milk, eggs, flour, baking powder, and salt is cooked into pancakes, filled with jam, and dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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French Pancakes

Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

French Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs until light, then pour the milk into the yolks.

  2. Sift the flour with the salt and baking powder, then add it alternately with the whipped egg whites.

Cook and fill

  1. Heat a griddle and cook the batter in large spoonfuls.

  2. Transfer each cooked pancake to a hot plate, spread lightly with jam or jelly, and roll it up.

Serve

  1. Arrange the rolls on a dish and sprinkle lightly with powdered sugar.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour 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
Yolks enrich the batter and whipped whites lighten it so the pancakes stay tender.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the pancakes together once cooked.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the pancakes rise and become light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and makes the batter loose enough to spoon onto the griddle.
Jam or jelly
Adds sweetness and moisture inside the rolled pancake.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Whipped whites trap air that gives lift. Adding flour alternately with the whites, rather than stirring hard, keeps that air from collapsing and keeps the pancakes light.

“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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