Skip to main content
Main

Cornmeal Griddle Cakes

A batter of cornmeal, flour, eggs, milk, baking powder, and salt baked on a hot griddle.

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

Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cornmeal Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Place the cornmeal in a bowl and pour just enough boiling water over it to moisten; do not make it soft.

  2. Let the mixture cool.

  3. Add the milk to the cooled cornmeal.

  4. Beat the eggs until very light and mix them into the batter.

  5. Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together, then add to the batter.

  6. Mix well and beat vigorously for 1–2 minutes.

Cook

  1. Bake on a hot griddle until golden brown.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Provides the main body and grainy, slightly crisp texture of the pancakes.
Eggs
Add structure and lift, helping the pancakes hold together while cooking.
All-purpose flour
Adds gluten-forming structure that holds the pancakes together with the cornmeal.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the pancakes rise and turn light.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the cornmeal into a pourable batter.

The step that matters

Moisten the cornmeal lightly. Cornmeal absorbs water slowly and the boiling water starts that process. Adding only enough to moisten keeps the batter from becoming soft and heavy, which would stop the pancakes from rising and browning evenly.

“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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes