Skip to main content
Main

Corn Meal Griddle Cakes

A batter of flour, cornmeal, sugar, salt, sour milk, eggs, butter, and baking soda cooked on a greased griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Corn Meal Griddle Cakes

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 Meal Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Mix and sift the flour, cornmeal, sugar, and salt.

  2. Add the sour milk, beaten eggs, and melted butter. Beat until very light.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in a little water and add it to the mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour spoonfuls of the batter onto a hot greased griddle and brown on both sides.

  2. Serve with butter and maple syrup.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the cakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acid to release gas, helping the cakes rise.
Sour milk
Provides liquid and its acidity activates the baking soda.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the batter.
Cornmeal
Adds texture and a grainy, slightly sweet corn flavor.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and tenderness in the cakes.

The step that matters

Add the baking soda dissolved in water. Baking soda needs the acid in the sour milk to react and create gas for rising. Dissolving it first spreads it evenly so the cakes rise uniformly rather than in patches.

“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 cornmeal griddle cakes recipes

Potato 4 See all 46 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes