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Pancakes and Fritters

A light batter of milk, ginger, brandy, and salt cooked into pancakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 and Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine milk, beaten ginger, brandy, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Heat a pan and add a piece of butter.

Cook

  1. Pour a ladleful of batter into the pan, tilting it to spread the batter evenly, then shake the pan.

  2. When one side is golden, flip the pancake.

  3. Once both sides are cooked, place the pancake on a dish.

Serve

  1. 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Brandy + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Milk + gingertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,519 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Ginger + brandytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the batter and helps the pancake set as it cooks.
Brandy
Adds aromatic flavour, and much of its alcohol evaporates during cooking.
Ginger
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the batter.
Butter
Adds fat for frying, enriching the flavour and helping the surface brown.

The step that matters

Flipping when one side is golden. Flipping too early can tear the pancake because the underside has not set enough to hold its shape. Waiting until the surface is golden shows the batter has set and the underside has browned, so the pancake lifts cleanly and cooks evenly on both sides.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, brandy, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, brandy, butter. 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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