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Drop Cakes

Drop cakes are fried cornmeal cakes made with milk or water, salt, egg, and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Drop Cakes

Why it works: Coffee and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,202 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Drop Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Scald the corn meal with milk or water.

  2. Add a little salt and the beaten egg.

Fry

  1. Drop spoonfuls into hot lard.

  2. Fry until done.

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. Coffee + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Coffee + corntop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together247 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Corn + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Corn meal
Forms the body of the batter, giving the cakes their grainy, sturdy texture.
Egg
Binds the batter together and helps the cakes hold their shape while frying.
Milk or water
Hydrates and scalds the corn meal, softening it so it can form a smooth, cohesive batter.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls into hot lard. The lard must be hot enough to set the outside of each cake quickly. If it is too cool, the batter soaks up grease and the cakes turn heavy and greasy rather than crisp.

“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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