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Breakfast

Shrove Tuesday Pancakes

A pancake batter made with eggs, cream, milk, flour, baking powder, salt, served with maple syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Shrove Tuesday Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs separately in a large bowl.

  2. Add the salt to the beaten eggs.

  3. Pour in the cream and milk, mixing well.

  4. Gradually add pastry flour mixed with baking powder until the batter is pourable.

Cook and make the syrup

  1. Heat a griddle and fry small cakes of the batter until golden brown.

  2. To prepare the syrup, cover the maple sugar with water and let it sit overnight.

  3. The next morning, mash the sugar and dissolve it well before heating.

  4. Boil the mixture for 10 to 15 minutes until it thickens to a honey-like consistency.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Eggs
Provide structure and richness to the batter as they set when cooked.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the pancakes rise and turn light.
Pastry flour
Forms the body of the batter, setting into the pancake structure when cooked.
Rich cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the pancakes a tender texture and fuller flavour.
Milk
Provides liquid that hydrates the flour and loosens the batter to a pourable consistency.
Maple sugar
Sweetens the syrup and thickens to a honey-like consistency when boiled.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup to a honey-like consistency. Sugar syrup thickens as water evaporates and concentrates. Boiling too briefly leaves it thin, while boiling too long can make it stiff and crystallise as it cools.

“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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