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Potato-corn Meal Griddle Cakes

A griddle cake made from mashed potato, cornmeal, flour, and eggs, baked on a griddle.

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

Prepare the potato base

  1. Combine mashed potato, salt, sweetening, and ½ cup milk or water in a bowl.

  2. Blend in the corn meal.

  3. Heat, stirring frequently, until scalded, about 5 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool.

Make the batter

  1. Once cool, add melted shortening, beaten egg, sifted flour, and baking powder.

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

Cook

  1. Preheat a griddle.

  2. 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 a soft, tender body to the batter.
Egg
Binds the batter and gives the cakes structure as it sets.
Corn meal
Provides the grainy texture and corn flavor that define the cakes.
Flour
Builds the main structure so the cakes hold together on the griddle.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the batter so the cakes rise and stay light.
Shortening
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and helps the cakes brown.

The step that matters

Let the scalded mixture cool before adding the egg and baking powder. A hot mixture can partly cook the beaten egg and weaken the baking powder, so the batter may set unevenly and rise less well.

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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