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Virginia Waffles

A waffle made with cornmeal, flour, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, baking powder, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Virginia Waffles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cook the cornmeal in boiling water for 20 minutes.

  2. Add the milk, sifted dry ingredients, beaten egg yolks, melted butter, and stiffly beaten egg whites.

Cook

  1. Cook the mixture in a waffle iron 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. 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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Egg whites
Stiffly beaten whites trap air, lightening the batter and helping the waffles rise and turn crisp.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter together.
Flour
Provides the main structure once the batter sets in the waffle iron.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking, helping the waffles rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat for flavor and a tender texture with golden browning.
White cornmeal
Adds a slightly grainy texture and corn flavor to the waffles.

The step that matters

Folding in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Whites that are under-beaten will not trap enough air, so the waffles come out denser. Over-mixing after they are added deflates the foam and loses the lift they provide.

“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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