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Thin Batter Cakes of Corn Meal

Thin batter cakes made from cornmeal, milk, egg, sugar, baking powder, and salt, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Thin Batter Cakes of Corn Meal

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix cornmeal, milk, egg, sugar, baking powder, and salt until smooth.

Cook

  1. Heat a skillet over medium heat and add butter.

  2. Pour batter onto the skillet to form small cakes.

  3. Cook until bubbles form on the surface, then flip and cook until golden brown.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Cornmeal
Provides the grainy structure and crisp-edged texture of the pancakes.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps set the cakes as they cook.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the cakes rise and turn light.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown evenly.
Milk
Hydrates the cornmeal and gives the batter its pourable moisture.

The step that matters

Cook until bubbles form before flipping. Bubbles forming on the surface show the batter has set enough underneath to hold its shape. Flipping too early can tear the cakes and leave the centers raw and gummy.

“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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