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Preserve

Corn Griddle Cakes

A batter of corn, flour, milk, eggs, butter, and salt cooked on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Corn Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Scrape the corn and press out excess liquid.

  2. Combine corn, egg yolks, milk, salt, melted butter, and flour in a bowl. Mix the batter well.

  3. Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Cook the cakes

  1. Preheat the griddle.

  2. Pour the batter onto the griddle.

  3. Cook until golden brown.

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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Corn
Provides the bulk and mild sweetness that give the cakes their body.
Flour
Provides starch and gluten that give the batter structure so the cakes hold together.
Eggs
Egg yolks bind the batter, and whipped whites add lift and a light texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a pourable consistency.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and helps the surface brown on the griddle.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Whipped whites trap air that gives the cakes lift. Stirring vigorously deflates that foam, leaving the cakes dense and flat, so fold slowly with a spatula until just combined.

“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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