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Dessert

Corn Drops

Corn Drops are small baked cornmeal cakes made with milk, butter, eggs, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Corn Drops

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Scald the pint of milk over boiling water.

  2. Stir in the cornmeal mixed with ½ cup cold milk, salt, and butter.

  3. Cook until the batter thickens like mush.

  4. Remove from heat and beat in the eggs until light.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls onto a buttered baking sheet.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

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. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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 richness and lift as they are beaten in.
Cornmeal
Thickens the milk into a mush that gives the cakes their body and texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the cakes brown in the oven.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that cooks with the cornmeal into a thick batter.

The step that matters

Cook until the batter thickens like mush. Cooking the cornmeal in hot liquid gelatinizes its starch so the batter thickens. If it is undercooked, the cakes may be pasty and spread poorly. Cooling before adding the eggs keeps them from scrambling.

“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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