Calculator output, plated. The lacy edges are Section IX; the rest is Sections I through VIII. I have been making pancakes for twenty-five years. It was the first food I ever learned to cook, starting with Dorie Greenspan’s recipe from Pancakes: From Morning to Midnight. I made her recipe dutifully for close to twenty years until someone mentioned Kenji López-Alt’s buttermilk pancakes, and I switched to making those dutifully instead. But I started to wonder whether I had actually found the optimal pancake, or just the most recently recommended one. And every time I made Kenji’s recipe I was annoyed at two things: having to run out for buttermilk (or do mental stoichiometry to substitute yogurt while in a pre-caffeinated state), and the use of imprecise cup measurements rather than weights. I was also curious about competing recipes that used sour cream, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese. Each one claimed to be the best. None of them showed their work. So I did what any reasonable person would do.…