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Green Corn Griddle-cakes

A griddle cake made with milk, grated green corn, eggs, baking powder, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Green Corn Griddle-cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine milk, grated green corn, salt, eggs, and baking powder.

  2. Add flour gradually until the mixture reaches a batter consistency.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a griddle and pour batter to form cakes.

  2. Cook until golden brown on both sides.

  3. Serve hot with butter.

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 + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 as they set.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cakes rise and become lighter.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the batter body and hold the cakes together.
Milk
Adds liquid to hydrate the flour and gives the batter moisture and tenderness.
Grated green corn
Supplies moisture, sweetness and corn flavour, and thickens the batter as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cook until golden brown on both sides. The griddle must be hot enough to set the outside before the centre cooks through. Browning comes from heat reacting with the sugars and proteins in the batter, so a cool griddle gives pale, gummy cakes and too high a heat burns the outside first.

“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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