Can maths make the perfect pancake?

Mathematics students from The University of Sheffield, in collaboration with a local branch of Frankie and Benny’s have created an algebraic formula to create the perfect pancake.

This formula has been incorporated into an online ‘perfect pancake calculator’. Those who wish to know the secret should simply enter the key parameters, including number of pancakes required, pancake depth, and pan diameter. After said parameters have been fed through the flavoursome function, the calculator generates and displays ingredients needed for the perfect pancake: a foolproof Shrove Tuesday shopping list.

Mathsy

The formula was constructed by students from SUMS (Sheffield University Maths Society – an acronym made to be). Chefs based at Meadowhall’s Frankie and Benny’s restaurant aided this wondrous creation by rigorously testing equations that the students put to them, ensuring that sound maths didn’t lead to crêpe results.

Ingredients prescribed on the calculator are to be used in a recipe devised by Delia Smith, which unfortunately, doesn’t look as effortless as simply crunching a few numbers.

As well as making Pancake Day a little easier for everyone, Gaby Thompson, president of SUMS, hopes that this endeavour will remedy a stigma that some people may carry surrounding mathematics:

“Cooking is a fun and innovative way to demonstrate how maths can be used and explored in everyday life and we hope by developing this formula it will encourage more people to engage with the subject and help to combat maths phobia.”

The perfect pancake?

This isn’t the first time that the University of Sheffield has used their Maths department in pursuit of something sweet and delicious – in May last year, Dr Eugenia Cheng developed a formula for the perfect cream tea.

Keep up the good work, Brains. Arithmetic has never tasted so good.