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Dessert

Crepes a LA Creme

A French pancake made with cream, cinnamon, coriander, sugar, flour, eggs, butter, nutmeg, and salt, fried and topped with sifted sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Crepes a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Boil the cream with cinnamon, coriander seeds, and sugar for 5 minutes.

  2. Let it cool.

  3. Mix in flour and beaten eggs.

  4. Strain through a fine sieve.

  5. Stir in melted butter, nutmeg, and salt.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat butter in a frying pan.

  2. Pour in a teacup full of batter and fry until golden brown without flipping.

  3. Serve with sifted sugar on top.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + coriandertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Coriander + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together397 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 the crêpes as they cook, giving structure.
Flour
Thickens the batter and gives the crêpes body so they hold together.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving a tender, soft texture.
Butter
Adds fat for flavour and helps the crêpes brown in the pan.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown as it cooks.

The step that matters

Fry without flipping. The batter is thick and fairly set after cooling, so the top must firm and the underside brown before any turning. Flipping too early can tear the crêpe or make it dense. Keeping the pan moderately hot helps the surface set evenly.

Swap the coriander

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Corianderthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, cinnamon, sugar, flour, egg, butter, nutmeg. 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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