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Potato-corn Meal Griddle Cakes

A griddle cake made with mashed potato, cornmeal, flour, egg, and milk or water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 938 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Potato-corn Meal Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the mashed potato, salt, sweetening, and ½ cup of milk or water.

  2. Blend in the corn meal and heat, stirring frequently, until the meal is scalded, about 5 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool.

  4. Once cooled, add the melted shortening, beaten egg, sifted flour, and baking powder.

  5. Mix in enough liquid to create a pourable batter that is not too thin.

Cook

  1. Preheat a griddle and bake the batter slowly until thoroughly cooked.

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. Potato + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Mashed potato
Adds moisture and tenderness to the batter, keeping the cakes soft inside.
Corn meal
Provides the main body and corn flavour, and scalding it softens its texture.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps hold the cakes together as they cook.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to lift the cakes and give them a lighter crumb.
Flour
Adds structure so the cakes hold their shape when cooked.

The step that matters

Scald the corn meal and let it cool fully. Scalding swells the corn meal and softens its grains, so the batter cooks evenly and feels tender rather than gritty. Adding the baking powder and egg only after cooling keeps the heat from weakening the leavening and the egg.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, corn, flour, milk):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, corn, flour, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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