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Pancakes, French

Thin pancakes made from flour, butter, sugar, eggs, and milk, served with jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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, French

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until smooth.

  3. Beat in the eggs and stir in the flour lightly.

  4. Add the warm milk, which will slightly curdle the mixture, and beat well.

  5. Cover and let it stand for about 1 hour.

Cook the pancakes

  1. Grease 6 plates or large saucers.

  2. Pour an equal quantity of batter into each plate.

  3. Bake quickly until the batter rises, then more slowly for about 10 minutes.

Fill and serve

  1. Spread 5 pancakes with warm jam, stack them, and cover with the plain pancake.

  2. Dredge well with castor sugar and serve quickly.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 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

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the thin pancake together as it sets.
Eggs
Add structure and help the batter bind and set when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the pancakes.
Milk
Supplies moisture so the batter pours thinly and cooks through.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the dusted top brown lightly.
Jam
Adds sweetness and fruit flavour between the stacked pancakes.

The step that matters

Bake quickly until the batter rises. A hot surface sets the thin batter fast, trapping steam so it rises and stays tender. Slow cooking afterward dries and finishes the pancake without scorching it.

“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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