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Green Corn Cakes

A batter of grated green corn, eggs, flour, milk, salt, and butter baked 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 ↓

Green Corn Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs separately.

  2. Add the beaten yolks to the corn.

  3. Mix in the salt and melted butter.

  4. Stir in the milk and mix well.

  5. Add enough flour to make a thin batter.

  6. Fold in the beaten egg whites until stiff.

Cook and serve

  1. Bake on a hot griddle, butter generously, and serve very hot.

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

Green corn
Provides the main body, moisture and natural sweetness of the cakes.
Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter, while whipped whites add structure and lift.
Flour
Gives the batter structure so the cakes hold together when cooked.
Milk
Adds moisture and thins the batter to a pourable consistency.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, and helps the cakes brown on the griddle.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites until stiff. Whites beaten to stiff peaks trap air that gives the cakes lift. Overmixing after folding in the whites deflates that air, leaving the cakes dense and 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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