- A ten hour wait doesn't really strike me as a pancake? You should have a "it's 730am, there's four screaming girls, only two of which are related to me, the dogs are begging for scraps, and the demand for pancakes has crossed into Veblen goods territory."
by my_throwaway23
3 subcomments
- Perhaps you could add a classic Swedish take on pancakes/crepes - whisk a moderate numbers of eggs with milk (4 eggs for every litre of milk is a good starting point, but dealers choice), flour until a nice consistency, fry in a pan until they're your chosen colour of done. Serve with strawberry jam, or any sweet condiment of your choice.
Edit: Also, what in the name of all that's holy - looking beyond the generator, this entire article is amazing. Absurd level of detail for pancakes, yes, but amazing.
by gettingoverit
0 subcomment
- Actually, the whole website is fire. There are articles on the same level on how to select T-shirts and pants.
This is the second time I see a reviewer online doing the thing that was common a couple decades ago: actually doing the research.
- Well I have a new favorite website. I don’t know the last time that I read something that was so thoroughly and multidimensionally my shit.
Not actually measuring crispness when you self report having the perfect equipment to do so is a cruel, cruel tease though.
- I want to like this but it reads like Claude output, how much scrutiny did this get for accuracy?
- I saw here on HN maybe a couple of months ago a post where someone had basically created a "color space" for breakfast foods... oh sweet, I found it:
The Hunt for Dark Breakfast
https://moultano.wordpress.com/2026/02/22/the-hunt-for-dark-...
by chrysoprace
1 subcomments
- Awesome work. I'm really interested in the parametric-driven recipe card. I wanted to do something like this for bread recipes where you can tweak the hydration / salt levels to alter the recipe but still get a traditional recipe card. I would be really curious to hear about the approach in more detail.
by applfanboysbgon
1 subcomments
- There's a whole lot of "I" in this post for something you didn't do. Why are you taking credit for Claude's work? What makes you feel entitled to say "I did this thing" when Claude did the thing?
- You've covered dairy and acid ingredients, but I honestly have no idea what "Unrendered Berkshire pork fat" is or where I would get it. Is that bacon grease? Saltpork? Lard is common but rendered.
- Yes! The world needs more Parametric-driven recipes. This is fantastic. Love it.
by martythemaniak
3 subcomments
- Protip: you don't need buttermilk, you need milk and acid. 1 cup milk and 1tbsp vinegar do the same job and are already in your kitchen.
Source: Frank Proto's pancakes
https://youtu.be/vkcHmpKxFwg?si=a9GeGHKp0WzTmqPr
by codegrappler
1 subcomments
- I love the precision of this. I have one daughter who must avoid dairy and egg so we’ve experimented with various substitutes. The “creamy” oat milk works well. For eggs, we’ve found bob’s red mill egg replacer to work great with almost no discernible taste difference. The trick is mixing it with water in a separate little bowl and waiting 2-3 minutes. Too long and it gets overly gelatinous and won’t mix in well but too little waiting makes it too watery and you’ll get flat pancakes.
- "Ova Sfongia Ex Lacte" seems like a typo of a recipe that originated here (https://historicalitaliancooking.home.blog/english/recipes/a...) and spread around the Internet.
by iwassayinbourns
0 subcomment
- I would love to see the gluten and dairy free pancake recipe incorporated into this one for additional customizability. For example, what if I’m gluten free but not dairy free? Or happen to only have soy milk on the day but I’ve got plenty of butter?
by einpoklum
3 subcomments
- That's serious commitment for sure, but - I don't know, the image makes it seems like he low-key burned his pancakes 8-\
- This is great but at this point you should also give the calories since you have all the precise ingredients
- Related: Gus Mueller (of the excellent macOS image editor Acorn) has a parametric pizza dough calculator: https://maybepizza.com/calc/
- Funny. When you input only milk and soy milk, it ignores the soy. If only soy, suddenly the butter needs to be vegan.
- Wow. I really like this, but I want it to support non-dairy options.
- This would fit right in at https://www.cookingforengineers.com/
- Relevant: The Breakfast Simplex (https://moultano.wordpress.com/2026/02/22/the-hunt-for-dark-...)
by pricewatcherco
0 subcomment
- why sugar is included by default ? i mean i know american pancakes are meant to be sweet, but in other parts of the world they're consumed neutral at worst, often salty.
by names_are_hard
1 subcomments
- The article mentions tang repeatedly as if it's a positive thing. Maybe I don't know what tang is, but shouldn't pancakes be sweet and not tangy?
- I have bookmarked this site for future. I love Food Lab and this seems like a natural batty expansion on some of those ideas :)
by moron4hire
3 subcomments
- > the use of imprecise cup measurements rather than weights
It really does not matter. Both because variation doesn't matter and because weights vs volumes are not going to give a big enough variation to really be detectable.
- > This is not a pancake in the modern sense, but it is a batter cooked on a flat hot surface, which is the definition of one.
Are you sure it was a batter and not a dough? That would make it an archaic flatbread rather than pancake :)
(tho I guess cattails have no gluten to make kneading possible, but there are other flatbreads made of roots)
- This is awesome, chefsteps should hire you to do their parametric recipes.
by chickensong
0 subcomment
- > My particular favorite are the yeast-raised lemon ricotta kefir pancakes - the best I've ever had.
As a lemon ricotta pancake and yeast enthusiast, I look forward to trying your recipe! Thanks for sharing!
by paulorlando
1 subcomments
- Nice... Would be interesting to connect this to pancakebot.com
by fathermarz
0 subcomment
- This is what life is about right here
by dmitrig01
1 subcomments
- This is wonderful. Could you add European-style (i.e. non-Greek) yogurt as an option? That's what I most often have on hand.
- Looks great, but why isn't there a checkbox to turn off the chunk of pork fat? I use avocado oil, personally.
- All this work to basically describe the recipe for Bulgarian banitsa (баница).
- I like the table layout, with ingredients in a column, and rows being steps. It feels like a "best of both worlds" solution. I'd kind of like to have a list of "baseline required" ingredients though too, to know what to keep around.
- What if I only have baking soda around normally, and not baking powder?
What if I have bottled lemon juice and can't zest an actual lemon?
Also I hoped to see heavy cream listed as an ingredient.
- I will do yeast-raised waffles but usually don't bother with pancakes. I usually don't have buttermilk so I mix yogurt and milk. I just eyeball it, about 1/4-1/3 yogurt makes a good consistency. While food science is fun, there's no way I'm doing that much work on a Saturday morning.
by spillcoffee
0 subcomment
- As an avid maker of buttermilk pancakes from a box, you just blew my mind. I'm going to have to up my game and actually start experimenting... o.O
by ninalanyon
0 subcomment
- I expected the "What I have" to let me specify exactly what I have not just the dairy/wet ingredients.
Interesting nonetheless.
- Fun! I mix white and whole-wheat flour, which we think tastes better. Half and half, and up the baking powder by ~50%.
by sleepycat801
0 subcomment
- Interesting, experimented plenty over the years but never rigorously enough to arrive at a conclusive recipe. Temperature control is always a challenge.
by slopdetector
0 subcomment
- Related somewhat: has anyone read the sci fi book “deep crossings” and if so they remember the discussion of a pancake?
- The first picture is of overcooked pancakes. Hard to trust the rest :)
- What a site, good work mate
by cantalopes
0 subcomment
- I will definitely try it next weekend!
by aaronbrethorst
2 subcomments
- Neat. Now do it for gluten free flour[1] :)
this is the go-to recipe in my home. You can sub in GF flour (Bob's 1:1) and they're consistently excellent. https://smittenkitchen.com/2011/06/blueberry-yogurt-multigra...
[1] so I can enjoy it!
- This is incredible. I wish it had a dairy free option!
- I have a new favorite website for sure =)))....
- A wonderful, inspiring site. Thank you.
- Wow, that was. impressive :-)
A few random thoughts I had while reading this, in more or less the order they appeared:
1. The relation/connection between optimization and the hedonistic treadmill
2. That this combination of enthusiasm, curiosity, intelligence, rigor and inventiveness/creativity would be exactly what I would look for in a technical co-founder
3. What other parameters that we don't know about or are in a different dimension than those mentioned here (ingredients, amount, time etc.) would also push the needle?
4. This is why we can have nice things :-)
- you had me interested at the word "pancake" but I ain't gonna do maths to get it
by nathanathan
0 subcomment
- I love this
- here's kenji's recipe (footnote 64 in the article, in case you missed it lol):
https://www.seriouseats.com/light-and-fluffy-pancakes-recipe
- > A flat-flavored pancake is a vehicle for maple syrup.
Isn't this the point of a pancake? To get as much maple syrup into your body as possible?
by analog8374
1 subcomments
- You need a teflon-coated caliper to measure the batter puddles. And one of those point and click thermometers.
by fortran77
1 subcomments
- I'd love to see a "Labne" option
by andrew_kwak
0 subcomment
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by victorkulla
0 subcomment
- [flagged]
- Yuck, those pancakes look and sound gross to me. Obviously this is one person's perspective (or at least, one robot's perspective apparently), on a personal site, so they can say what they want. But none of it resonates with me. I like my pancakes light colored, sometimes even a little battery in the middle. My wife and kids like it more cooked than that, but certainly less than in the image. And we definitely don't like "tang".
The only real answer is to make a bunch of pancakes and get feedback from the people eating them.
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