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Pancakes and Fritters

A batter of eggs, flour, milk, nutmeg, and salt is cooked into pancakes, and apple slices are fried in the batter.

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 ↓

Pancakes and Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs with nutmeg and salt.

  2. Add flour and mix in enough milk to create a smooth batter, similar to the thickness of cream.

Make the pancakes

  1. Heat a clean frying pan and add a piece of butter about the size of a walnut.

  2. Once melted, pour in enough batter to cover the bottom of the pan, about ¼ inch thick.

  3. Cook until light brown on both sides.

Make the apple fritters and serve

  1. For apple fritters, add an extra tablespoon of flour to the batter.

  2. Peel and slice the apples thickly, remove the core, and dip in the batter.

  3. Fry the apple slices in hot oil until golden, then drain on a sieve.

  4. Serve garnished with grated loaf 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.

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. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Nutmeg + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 set into a tender structure when cooked.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the batter body and structure.
Milk
Thins the flour and eggs into a pourable batter with a smooth, cream-like consistency.
Butter
Fat for frying that adds flavor and promotes gentle browning on the pancake surface.
Apples
Fruit slices that soften and turn sweet-tart inside the golden batter coating.

The step that matters

Pour the batter thinly into the buttered pan. A batter poured too thick cooks unevenly, staying wet in the middle while the outside over-browns. A thin, even layer sets quickly and cooks through on both sides.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, nutmeg, flour, milk, 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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