Name: Green Corn Griddles
Ingredients: 2 cups finely grated tender corn; 2 cups sweet milk; 3 eggs; ¼ teaspoon salt; 1 heaping teaspoon butter; ½ teaspoon baking soda; 1 teaspoon cream of tartar; ½ cup flour (plus more as needed)

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 ↓

Green Corn Griddles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Warm the milk.
Beat the eggs.
Cream the butter and add it to the corn along with the salt.

Make the batter

Mix the baking soda and cream of tartar with ½ cup of flour, then stir it into the corn mixture.
Add more flour as needed to achieve a griddle batter consistency.

Bake

Bake on a griddle 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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,955 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,165 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

What each ingredient does

Corn: Provides the main body and sweet corn flavor of the griddle cakes.
Eggs: Add structure and richness, helping the batter hold together while cooking.
Flour: Gives the batter its structure so the griddle cakes hold their shape.
Baking soda: Reacts with the cream of tartar to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Cream of tartar: Acidifies the batter so it reacts with the baking soda to help it rise.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and helps the griddle cakes brown and taste rich.

The step that matters

Add more flour as needed to achieve a griddle batter consistency. Corn releases varying amounts of moisture, so the batter can be too loose to hold its shape on the griddle. Adding flour gradually until it reaches a spoonable consistency keeps the cakes from spreading or tearing when cooked.

“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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Green Corn Griddles