Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓
Corn Dodgers
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Make the batter
In a bowl, mix corn meal, salt, maple sugar (or lard syrup).
Pour in enough boiling water to create a batter that can drop from a spoon.
Shape and bake
Shape the batter into oval cakes about 1 inch thick in the center.
Drop the cakes onto a well-greased baking sheet.
Bake until golden brown. The maple sugar or syrup enhances the flavor.
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.
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Corn + milktop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,955 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
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Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together7,168 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
- Corn meal
- Forms the body of the cakes, setting into a sturdy, grainy texture when baked.
- Maple sugar
- Adds sweetness and flavor, and helps the cakes brown during baking.
- Lard syrup
- Used in place of maple sugar, adding sweetness and helping the cakes brown.
The step that matters
Pour in enough boiling water. Boiling water gelatinizes the starch in the corn meal so it can bind into a batter. Too little water leaves the batter crumbly and hard to shape, while too much makes it too soft to hold oval cakes.
“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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