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Dessert

Corn Drop Cakes

A fried corn batter cake made with grated corn, eggs, flour, baking powder, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Corn Drop Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs.

  2. Add the grated corn to the eggs.

  3. Sift the baking powder with the flour and fold it into the corn mixture.

  4. Stir in the melted butter and salt.

Fry

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into hot oil and fry until browned.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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

Grated corn
Provides the bulk and sweet corn flavour and moisture of the batter.
Eggs
Bind the batter together and set during frying to hold the cakes' shape.
Flour
Gives the cakes structure so they hold together rather than spreading in the oil.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the batter, helping the cakes puff and turn light.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richer flavour and a tender texture in the cakes.

The step that matters

Fry until browned. The oil must be hot when the spoonfuls go in. Hot oil sears the outside quickly, so the cakes brown and hold their shape instead of soaking up oil and spreading. Frying too cool makes them greasy and dense.

“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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