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Corn Meal Griddle Cakes

A batter of buttermilk, flour, cornmeal, egg, and baking soda is cooked on a griddle to make cornmeal pancakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Corn Meal Griddle Cakes

Why it works: Buttermilk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Corn Meal Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine buttermilk, flour, cornmeal, egg, and salt.

  2. Dissolve baking soda in boiling water and add to the mixture.

  3. Stir until well combined.

Cook the pancakes

  1. Heat a griddle over medium heat and lightly grease it.

  2. Pour batter onto the griddle and cook until bubbles form, then flip and cook until golden brown.

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. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Buttermilk + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,986 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Buttermilk
Adds moisture and acidity that tenderizes the batter and reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to release gas, helping the pancakes rise and stay light.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure so the pancakes hold together when flipped.
Cornmeal
Provides the coarse, grainy texture that gives these pancakes their character.
All-purpose flour
Supplies gluten-forming starch that gives the pancakes body and structure.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda dissolved in boiling water. Baking soda reacts quickly with the acid in buttermilk, so the batter should be cooked soon after mixing to keep the gas bubbles that lift the pancakes.

“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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