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Batter Cakes

Batter cakes made with hominy, cornmeal, eggs, butter, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Batter Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Boil the hominy until very soft.

  2. Add cornmeal, salt, and butter to the hominy.

  3. Mix in the eggs and enough milk to create a thin batter, then beat the mixture well.

Cook

  1. Bake on a griddle or in waffle irons.

  2. If eggs are unavailable, substitute with 1 tablespoon of yeast and let the batter rise for 1 hour.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hominy
Softened kernels add starchy body and moisture to the batter.
Cornmeal
Its starch thickens the batter and gives the cakes their structure.
Eggs
They bind the batter and help set the cakes as they cook.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavor.
Milk
Supplies liquid to loosen the batter to a pourable consistency.

The step that matters

Mix to a thin batter. Cornmeal and softened hominy absorb liquid as they stand. Enough milk keeps the batter pourable so it spreads and cooks through evenly, rather than baking up dense and heavy.

“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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