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Indian Meal Griddle Cakes

A griddle cake made with cornmeal, flour, sour milk, eggs, butter, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Indian Meal Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the cornmeal and flour.

  2. Add the sour milk and eggs, and stir until combined.

  3. Melt the butter and mix it into the batter.

  4. Add the baking soda and stir until well incorporated.

Cook the cakes

  1. Heat a griddle over medium heat and grease lightly.

  2. Pour batter onto the griddle to form cakes and cook until bubbles form on the surface.

  3. Flip and cook until golden brown on both sides.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 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

Cornmeal
Forms the main body of the cakes, giving them a coarse, grainy texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cakes set on the griddle.
Sour milk
Supplies liquid and acidity that reacts with the baking soda to help the cakes rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and tenderness, and helps the cakes brown on the griddle.

The step that matters

Add the baking soda and stir until well incorporated. Baking soda needs an acid, here the sour milk, to release carbon dioxide. If it is unevenly mixed, some cakes rise unevenly or taste bitter in patches, so the batter should be stirred thoroughly before cooking.

“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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