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Dessert

Indiana Batter Cakes

A cornmeal batter cake from Indiana made with lard, baking soda, and water, served hot with butter or molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,847 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Indiana Batter Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Sift cornmeal into a pan.

  2. Add lard or drippings.

  3. Dissolve baking soda in a little warm water, then add the dissolved baking soda to the mixture.

  4. Make a soft dough with cold water.

  5. Gradually add warm water to achieve a moderate batter consistency.

  6. Stir the mixture well for 30 minutes.

Bake and serve

  1. Heat a griddle over the fire.

  2. Bake the batter like buckwheat cakes.

  3. Serve hot with butter or molasses.

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. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Yellow cornmeal
Forms the body of the batter and sets into the cakes as they cook.
Lard or drippings
Adds fat for richness and helps keep the cakes tender and from sticking.
Baking soda
Reacts to lift the batter so the cakes rise and turn lighter.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture well for 30 minutes. Long stirring fully hydrates the cornmeal and spreads the baking soda evenly through the batter. Uneven mixing leaves pockets of soda that can make some cakes bitter or patchy and others flat.

“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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