Skip to main content
Main

Aunty's Corn Cakes

Corn cakes made from sweet corn, egg, flour, salt, fried in butter and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Aunty's Corn Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Cut the kernels from the corn by drawing a knife through each row on the cob, then scrape it out.

  2. In a bowl, combine the corn with the beaten egg and enough flour to thicken the mixture. Add coarse sea salt to taste.

Fry

  1. Heat a mixture of butter and lard in a skillet.

  2. Fry the corn mixture in cakes 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Sweet corn
Provides the main body and sweet flavour of the cakes.
Egg
Binds the corn kernels together so the cakes hold their shape.
Flour
Thickens the mixture so it can be shaped into cakes rather than spreading.
Butter and lard
Fat for frying that promotes browning and adds richness to the outside.

The step that matters

Frying the cakes until golden brown on both sides. Cooking over steady heat lets the surface brown through the Maillard reaction while the centre sets. Too high a heat scorches the outside before the egg and flour cook through.

“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.

More corn cakes recipes

Green 20Indian 3Virginia 3 See all 125 →

You might also like

Corn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesCream of Corn SoupCream of Corn Soup50 recipesGreen Corn SoupGreen Corn Soup46 recipesCornmeal GruelCornmeal Gruel41 recipes