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Virginia Corn Cakes

A simple cornmeal batter cooked on a griddle.

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 ↓

Virginia Corn Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the cornmeal and salt with half of the milk; mix well.

  2. Add the melted butter and beaten eggs, then stir in the remaining milk.

Cook the cakes

  1. Preheat a griddle over medium heat.

  2. Pour batter onto the griddle in uniform sizes and cook until golden 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. Egg + buttertop 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

Cornmeal
Forms the body of the cakes and gives them their grainy, sturdy texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the cakes as they cook.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness, moisture and golden browning on the griddle.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the cornmeal so the batter becomes pourable and cooks through.

The step that matters

Pour batter onto the griddle in uniform sizes. Cakes of even size cook at the same rate, so they brown evenly and finish cooking through at the same time instead of some burning while others stay raw in the center.

“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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