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Dessert

Pancakes, French

A stack of thin baked pancakes spread with warm jam and dusted with sugar.

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

Prepare the batter

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until smooth.

  3. Beat in the eggs.

  4. Stir in the flour lightly.

  5. Add the warm milk, which may slightly curdle the mixture.

  6. Beat the mixture well.

  7. Cover and let it stand for 1 hour.

Bake and stack

  1. Prepare 6 buttered plates or large saucers.

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

  3. Bake quickly until the batter rises.

  4. Bake more slowly for about 10 minutes.

  5. Spread 5 pancakes with warm jam and stack them on top of each other.

  6. Cover with the plain pancake and dust with castor sugar.

  7. Serve immediately.

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
Provides the structure that holds the thin batter together as it sets.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter set and rise when baked.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture in the cooked pancakes.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that turns the batter thin and moistens the pancakes.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cooked pancakes brown lightly on the surface.

The step that matters

Bake quickly until the batter rises. Batter needs a hot start so the eggs and flour set and the pancake rises before it dries out. Too low a heat makes flat, tough pancakes.

“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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