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Breakfast

Indian Breakfast Cakes

A quick cornmeal cake made by mixing cornmeal with boiling milk, butter, salt, cream of tartar, and baking soda, then baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Indian Breakfast Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Pour boiling milk over cornmeal in a bowl.

  2. Add butter, salt, cream of tartar, and baking soda to the mixture, and mix well.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into a pan.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until rough on top.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Forms the body of the cakes and gives them their grainy structure.
Boiling milk
Hydrates and softens the cornmeal starch while adding moisture to the batter.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and richer flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that lifts the cakes.
Cream of tartar
Provides acidity that activates the baking soda for rising.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling milk over the cornmeal. Hot milk fully hydrates the cornmeal and softens its starch, so the batter becomes smooth and cooks evenly rather than staying gritty or dry.

“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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