Skip to main content
Dessert

Plain Corn Batter Cakes

A fried cornmeal batter cake served hot with butter, molasses, or honey.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Plain Corn Batter Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Sift the cornmeal into a bowl.

  2. Add coarse sea salt, 1-2 eggs, and lard or milk or meat broth.

  3. Mix in 1 teaspoon of baking soda and beat well.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a well-greased griddle over high heat.

  2. Pour small amounts of batter onto the griddle and fry until golden brown.

  3. Serve hot with butter, molasses, or honey.

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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. 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

Corn meal
Provides the main body and grainy structure of the pancakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during frying.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to produce gas, helping the pancakes rise and lighten.
Lard or milk or meat broth
Supplies liquid to hydrate the cornmeal and make a pourable batter.

The step that matters

Pour small amounts of batter onto the griddle. Heat must be well greased and hot enough to set the batter quickly. Small amounts spread thinly and cook through evenly, while large pours can stay raw inside and burn outside before they set.

“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.

You might also like

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesCorn CakeCorn Cake90 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesCorn Starch CakeCorn Starch Cake89 recipes