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Corn-meal Batter Cakes

A batter cake made from cornmeal mush, flour, eggs, milk, and butter, cooked on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Corn-meal Batter Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the cornmeal mush, flour, and salt.

  2. In another bowl, beat the yolks of the eggs and mix in the milk.

  3. Stir the egg mixture into the cornmeal mixture until smooth, adding more milk if needed.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gently fold them into the batter.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a lightly buttered frying pan or griddle over medium-high heat.

  2. Pour small amounts of batter onto the pan and cook until golden brown on both sides.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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
Yolks add richness and binding, while whipped whites lighten the batter and help it rise.
Flour
Provides structure so the cakes hold their shape while cooking.
Cornmeal mush
Forms the body of the cakes and gives them their grainy, hearty texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a pourable consistency.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites trap air that lightens the cakes. Stirring them in vigorously knocks that air out, so folding gently keeps the cakes light and tender.

“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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