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Breakfast

Pancakes

A batter of flour, eggs, brandy, salt, orange flower water, milk, and water is fried into pancakes and served with powdered sugar, lemon, Seville orange.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Pancakes

Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the flour with the eggs, brandy, salt, orange flower water, milk, and water in a bowl until you achieve a smooth batter.

Cook the pancakes

  1. Melt butter or lard in a frying pan over medium heat.

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

  3. Cook until browned on one side.

  4. Loosen the edges with a knife and flip to brown the other side.

  5. Roll each pancake.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, dusted with powdered sugar, alongside lemon and Seville orange.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the batter once it is mixed with liquid and eggs.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the pancake structure as it cooks.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps the pancakes brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Loosen the edges and flip at the right moment. Flipping before the first side is set and browned can tear the pancake. Browning on the first side gives the surface enough structure to lift cleanly and shows the second side will cook evenly.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, brandy, milk, butter, sugar, lemon. 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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