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Virginia Corn Cakes

A batter of cornmeal, milk, eggs, butter, and salt cooked on a griddle into golden cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Virginia Corn Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine cornmeal and salt with half of the milk; mix well.

  2. Add melted butter and beaten eggs, then stir in the remaining milk.

Cook the cakes

  1. Preheat a griddle and pour batter to form uniform cakes.

  2. Cook until golden brown on both sides.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Forms the main body of the cakes and gives them their grainy texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help hold the cakes together while they cook.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the cakes brown on the griddle.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the cornmeal so it forms a pourable batter.

The step that matters

Cook until golden brown on both sides. Cakes cooked over too low heat stay pale and doughy inside, while high heat can scorch the outside before the centre sets. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction, so steady medium heat and a flip at the right moment matter.

“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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