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Dessert

Indian Meal Cakes

A batter of Indian meal, salt, water, egg yolks, pastry flour, and baking powder baked on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Indian Meal Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Blend the Indian meal and salt together.

  2. Pour enough boiling water over the mixture to make it thinner than mush.

  3. Let it stand for 2 to 3 minutes.

  4. Pour it into a mixing bowl to cool.

  5. Add the beaten egg yolks and sifted pastry flour mixed with baking powder.

Cook

  1. Bake on a 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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Indian meal
Forms the bulk of the cakes and gives them a coarse, grainy body.
Egg yolks
Add richness and bind the batter so the cakes hold together.
Pastry flour
Adds a finer starch structure that helps the cakes set tender.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cakes rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Cooling before adding the egg yolks. If the mixture is still very hot, it can scramble the beaten yolks and thin the batter unevenly. Letting it cool first keeps the yolks smooth and the batter stable, and it keeps the baking powder from reacting too early.

“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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