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Corn-meal Batter Cakes

Thin cornmeal batter cakes made with sour milk, eggs, salt and baking soda, 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 egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Corn-meal Batter Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Dissolve the baking soda in hot water.

  2. Mix the sour milk, beaten eggs, salt, and enough cornmeal to make a thin batter.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a griddle over a high flame.

  2. Pour batter onto the griddle and cook until golden brown.

  3. Butter each cake as soon as it's cooked and keep warm until served.

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 + 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

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the cakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acid to produce carbon dioxide, helping the cakes rise.
Cornmeal
Forms the body of the pancakes and gives them their grainy texture and flavor.

The step that matters

Cook until golden brown on a hot griddle. Batter poured onto a griddle that is too cool spreads and cooks slowly, while one that is too hot browns before the centre sets. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction between sugars and proteins, so the heat must be steady to get an evenly cooked, golden cake.

“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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