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French Pan Cakes

A light batter of eggs, milk, flour, and oil cooked into thin pancakes, served rolled 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 ↓

French Pan Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg yolks and mix in the milk and sugar.

  2. Pour half of this mixture over the flour and stir until smooth.

  3. Add the remaining milk and beat well.

  4. Mix in the salad oil.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a frying pan.

  2. Pour enough batter to cover the bottom of the pan.

  3. Cook until browned.

  4. Flip and brown the other side.

  5. Spread with butter and sugar.

  6. Roll up.

  7. Sprinkle with powdered sugar before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 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
Egg yolks and beaten whites add structure and lift to the thin batter.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the pancakes their body and chew.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that hydrates the flour and helps the pancakes brown.
Salad oil
Adds fat that keeps the batter tender and helps the pancakes release from the pan.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Add the remaining milk and beat well after the first flour mixture. Making the batter in stages helps form a smooth, lump-free mixture, because flour clumps when liquid is poured in all at once. Thorough beating then distributes the ingredients evenly so the thin pancakes cook uniformly.

“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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