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Dropped Cornbread

Cornmeal batter fried into small cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Dropped Cornbread

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Sift together the cornmeal, salt, and sugar.

  2. Pour the boiling water over the mixture and let it stand for fifteen minutes until cool.

  3. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into hot fat and fry until golden brown.

  4. If desired, add a little sweet milk to the boiling water.

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. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk 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
Forms the body of the batter and sets into a crisp, sturdy crust when fried.
Boiling water
Hydrates and swells the cornmeal starch, turning the mix into a thick batter that holds its shape.
Sugar
Adds mild sweetness and helps the surface turn golden brown.

The step that matters

Drop the batter into hot fat. The fat must be hot enough to set the outside of each spoonful quickly. A fast crust holds the shape and limits how much oil the batter absorbs, so the cakes stay crisp rather than greasy.

“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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