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Cornmeal Griddle Cakes

A cornmeal batter with eggs, butter, and baking powder baked in a pan, folded with beaten egg whites for lightness.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Cornmeal Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Stir boiling hot sweet milk into cornmeal until combined.

  2. Add butter and salt, mixing well.

  3. Beat egg yolks with cold milk and stir into the mixture when it is not scalding hot.

  4. Mix in flour and baking powder until smooth.

Add the whites and bake

  1. Beat egg whites with sugar until stiff, then gently fold into the batter.

  2. Place the pan of cakes in a warm water bath while baking to make them light.

  3. Bake immediately after adding the egg whites.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whipped whites trap air that lifts the cakes.
Sweet milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the batter and softens the cornmeal.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cakes to rise and become lighter.
All-purpose flour
Adds gluten-forming protein that gives the cakes structure and holds their shape.
Butter
Adds fat that gives the cakes richer flavour and a tender texture.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the whites and helps them hold stiff peaks, and aids browning.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whipped whites hold the air that lifts the cakes. Stirring or folding them in too hard deflates the foam, so the cakes turn out dense rather than light.

“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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