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Breakfast

Cream Pancakes

A light pancake made with eggs, cream, and sugar, fried in lard and dusted with grated sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Cream Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs with the cream until well combined.

  2. Add the sugar and mix until dissolved.

  3. Make the batter as thin as possible.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a pan and pour in the batter to fry.

  2. Dust the pancakes with grated sugar before serving.

  3. Optionally, sprinkle with wine, fruit syrup, or grated nutmeg.

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. Cream + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Sugar + winetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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
Bind the batter and add structure as the pancakes set in the pan.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving the pancakes a tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pancakes brown lightly in the pan.

The step that matters

Make the batter as thin as possible. A thin batter spreads into a thin layer that cooks through quickly and evenly. A thick batter can leave the centre raw or cause the pancake to turn heavy and dense.

“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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