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Corn Meal Griddle Cakes

A batter of milk, cornmeal, yeast, eggs, salt, and wheat flour cooked on a salted griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Corn Meal Griddle Cakes

Why it works: Corn and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 465 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Corn Meal Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Boil the milk.

  2. Stir in enough corn meal to make a thick mush.

  3. Let the mixture cool slightly.

  4. Stir in the yeast, then the beaten eggs, the salt and the wheat flour.

  5. Let the batter stand for 3 to 4 hours.

Cook

  1. Preheat a griddle and rub it with salt.

  2. Pour batter onto the griddle.

  3. Cook until golden brown, rubbing with salt between batches.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Corn + wheattop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together465 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn meal
Forms a thick mush that gives the cakes their body and coarse texture.
Yeast
Ferments the batter during standing, producing gas that makes the cakes light and airy.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add richness and structure as the cakes set.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the corn meal and carries the other ingredients.
Wheat flour
Adds gluten-based structure to help the cakes hold their shape.

The step that matters

Let the batter stand for 3 to 4 hours. The yeast needs time to ferment the batter; rising gives the cakes their lightness. Under-resting yields dense cakes, while the batter must be fully cooled before yeast is added so the heat does not kill it.

“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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