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Pan Cakes

A batter of sugar, eggs, sour milk, sour cream, spices, and flour is fried into pancakes and served with raspberry shrub.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 ↓

Pan Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix together the sugar, eggs, sour milk, and sour cream.

  2. Add the baking soda, salt, nutmeg, and cinnamon, and stir well.

  3. Gradually add flour until the batter is quite stiff.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into hot fat and fry until golden brown.

  2. Serve with raspberry shrub poured over the pancakes.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 add structure and richness to the pancakes as they set.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda so the pancakes rise and turn tender.
Sour cream
Adds fat and moisture, giving the pancakes a softer, richer crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk and sour cream to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the batter body and set the pancake structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pancakes brown evenly in the hot fat.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls of the batter into hot fat and fry until golden brown.. The fat must be hot enough to set the outside quickly; if it is too cool, the pancakes absorb grease and turn heavy, while too hot browns the outside before the centre cooks.

Swap the raspberry

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

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

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