Butter vs Oil for Cooking Pancakes: Which Should You Use?

The short answer: butter gives a pancake better flavour and a richer golden colour, but it burns at a much lower temperature than oil, so it struggles over a batch of more than a few pancakes. Neutral oil is the safer, more forgiving choice for the pan. The approach most cooks settle on is a thin film of oil to cook in and a little butter for flavour, either in the batter or brushed on at the end.

The fat you cook pancakes in gets far less attention than the batter, but it decides a lot: how evenly the pancake browns, whether the edges go lacy and crisp or stay soft, and whether the pan is still usable by the tenth pancake. Here is what each option actually does, and when each one earns its place.

Why butter and oil behave differently

Oil is pure fat. Butter is not. Butter is mostly fat, but the rest is water plus a small amount of milk solids (the proteins and sugars left over from the cream). Those milk solids are both butter's great strength and its main problem.

They are what brown in the pan and give butter its rich, nutty flavour. They are also what burns. Milk solids start to scorch at a far lower temperature than a refined vegetable oil will smoke, which means butter that tastes wonderful under the first pancake can turn dark, bitter and speckled by the fourth. Once burnt solids build up, they transfer onto each new pancake as black flecks.

The water in butter matters too. It sputters when it hits a hot pan and has to cook off before the fat can do its job, which is why a knob of butter foams before it settles.

Cooking pancakes in butter

What it does well: flavour and colour. Butter gives thick American pancakes an even, deep golden surface and a taste you cannot get from oil. On a classic British pancake, a swirl of butter in the pan also produces a slightly crisp, lacy edge.

Where it goes wrong: heat and repetition. Butter needs medium or medium-low heat, and it needs wiping out and replacing every few pancakes before the solids burn. Cook a big batch on high heat in butter and you will get blotchy colouring and a bitter edge.

Use it when: you are cooking a handful of pancakes, you can keep the heat moderate, and flavour is the priority. A weekend stack for two is exactly the job for butter.

Cooking pancakes in oil

What it does well: consistency. A neutral oil such as sunflower, rapeseed or vegetable oil tolerates higher heat, does not burn between pancakes, and gives the same result on the first pancake as the twentieth. For thin pancakes and crêpes, which cook fast in a hot pan, that reliability matters more than anything.

Where it falls short: flavour. Oil adds nothing to the taste, and it tends to brown the surface less evenly than butter, often leaving a mottled rather than uniform finish. Too much oil also makes pancakes greasy, because the batter shallow-fries rather than cooks.

Use it when: you are feeding a crowd, cooking crêpes or thin British pancakes, or using a pan that runs hot. Avoid strongly flavoured oils such as extra virgin olive oil for sweet pancakes, as the peppery taste comes through. It suits savoury pancakes well.

The combinations most cooks end up with

You do not have to choose. Three approaches get most of butter's flavour with most of oil's reliability.

1. Oil in the pan, butter in the batter

Many American pancake recipes already include melted butter in the batter. That puts the flavour inside the pancake, where it cannot burn, and leaves you free to cook in a thin film of oil. If your recipe has no fat in the batter, stirring in a tablespoon or two of melted butter per 200g of flour and cooking in oil gives a buttery-tasting pancake without the burnt flecks.

2. Mostly oil with a little butter

Brush the pan with a little oil, then add a small knob of butter just before the batter goes in. The oil does most of the work of coating the pan, so you need far less butter, which means fewer milk solids to burn and less frequent wiping out. This is the approach recommended in the guide to why pancakes stick.

3. Clarified butter or ghee

Clarified butter is butter with the water and milk solids removed, leaving pure butterfat. It keeps much of butter's flavour, though less of the browned, nutty note, and it handles heat almost as well as oil. Ghee, sold in jars in most UK supermarkets, is essentially the same thing cooked a little longer. If you make pancakes often, a jar of ghee is the simplest way to cook in butter without watching the pan.

Does it matter for every style of pancake?

• Thin British pancakes: oil, or a mix. They cook in a hot pan one after another, which is exactly where butter burns. A little melted butter in the batter adds the flavour back.
• French crêpes: a very thin film of oil or clarified butter, wiped on with kitchen paper. Plain butter burns too quickly at crêpe temperatures. The science of crêpe batter explains why the pan needs to be so hot.
• American stacks: butter comes into its own here, because the heat is lower and each pancake cooks for longer. Melted butter in the batter and a light wipe of butter or oil in the pan is the usual approach across the American stack recipes.
• Scotch pancakes: traditionally cooked on a lightly greased griddle. A wipe of oil or butter on kitchen paper is enough; they should never sit in fat.
• Savoury pancakes: oil is usually the better fit, and this is where olive oil, or a little sesame oil in an Asian-style pancake, can add flavour that suits the filling.

How much fat to use

Less than most people think. On a decent non-stick pan, around half a teaspoon of fat per pancake is plenty, spread thin. A good habit is to wipe the pan with a folded piece of kitchen paper dipped in oil or melted butter rather than pouring fat straight in. That leaves a thin, even layer and stops pools of fat frying the edge of the pancake into something closer to a fritter. Heavier pans behave differently, and the guide to pancake cooking surfaces covers how cast iron, stainless steel and non-stick each handle fat.

Which is healthier?

Gram for gram, butter contains slightly fewer calories than oil, because part of it is water. The bigger difference is the type of fat. Butter is high in saturated fat, while sunflower and rapeseed oil are mostly unsaturated, and NHS guidance on fats is to swap saturated fats for unsaturated ones where you can.

In practice, the amount of fat that ends up on each pancake is small either way if you wipe the pan rather than pour. Using less of either makes more difference than which one you pick. The guide to healthy pancakes covers the rest of the batter.

Dairy-free and vegan options

For a dairy-free pancake, cook in oil and, if you want a buttery flavour, use a plant-based block in the batter. Plant-based blocks and spreads behave more like oil than butter in the pan because they have no milk solids to burn, though the softer, higher-water spreads can spit. Coconut oil works too, with a faint coconut taste that suits sweet toppings. The guide to vegan and dairy-free pancakes covers the rest of the swaps.

The verdict

For flavour on a small batch at moderate heat, use butter. For consistency, speed and a crowd, use oil. For the best of both, put melted butter in the batter and cook in a thin wipe of oil, or buy a jar of ghee. Whichever you choose, keep the layer thin and wipe the pan between pancakes.