Name: Buttermilk Waffles
Ingredients: 3 cups water; 2 tablespoons butter; 2 cups cornmeal; 2 teaspoons salt; 2 cups wheat flour; 1 teaspoon baking soda; 1 cup sweet milk; buttermilk or sour milk, enough to make a thin batter; 4 eggs

Why it works: Wheat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Buttermilk Waffles

Ingredients

Directions

In a double boiler, cook the cornmeal, water, salt, and butter together for 10 minutes.
Once the mixture is cool, beat the eggs separately until very light and add them to the corn mixture.
Sift the flour and baking soda together.
Alternately add the flour and sweet milk to the corn mixture.
Finally, stir in the buttermilk.
Let the mixture stand for a short time before cooking.

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.

Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,418 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,721 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,373 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Wheat Bread65 recipes

Whole Wheat Bread55 recipes

Barley Wheat Bread6 recipes

Cornbread345 recipes

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Buttermilk Waffles