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Griddle Cake, American

A cornmeal and flour griddle cake cooked on a buttered pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Griddle Cake, American

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Boil the milk.

  2. Gradually pour the boiled milk over the cornmeal.

  3. In a bowl, mix the flour, salt, cream of tartar, baking soda, and sugar.

  4. Wait until the cornmeal mixture is cool.

  5. Add the flour mixture and beaten eggs to the cornmeal mixture.

Cook the cakes

  1. Heat a frying pan.

  2. Add the butter to the pan.

  3. When the butter is hot, pour in a tablespoon of the batter.

  4. Fry until 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the cakes.
Cornmeal
Gives the cakes their grainy texture and body.
Flour
Adds structure so the cakes hold their shape when fried.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to lift the batter and help the cakes rise.
Cream of tartar
Provides acidity that activates the baking soda for lift.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the cornmeal and flour into a batter.

The step that matters

Let the cornmeal mixture cool before adding the flour mixture and eggs. Adding eggs to very hot cornmeal can cook them unevenly and cause lumps. Cooling keeps the batter smooth and lets the eggs blend in 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.

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