Skip to main content
Dessert

Indian Corn Biscuit

A biscuit made with cornmeal, wheat flour, milk, eggs, salt, baking soda, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Corn and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 465 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Indian Corn Biscuit

Oven, in the book's wordsThe hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “the hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Sift together corn meal and wheat flour in a large bowl.

  2. Stir in the milk and salt until well combined.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and stir them into the batter.

  4. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then fold them into the batter.

  5. Add the baking soda last and mix gently.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease small pans with butter.

  2. Fill the pans nearly full with the batter.

  3. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until puffed and golden.

  4. Turn the biscuits out of the pans immediately.

  5. 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. Corn + wheattop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together465 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 the whipped whites lighten the batter and help it rise.
Wheat flour
Adds gluten-based structure that helps hold the biscuits together with the corn meal.
Corn meal
Provides the main body and the characteristic corn flavour and texture.
Milk
Moistens the dry ingredients and helps form the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to produce gas, helping the biscuits rise and brown.

The step that matters

Folding in the stiff egg whites. Whites hold air only if beaten until stiff and folded in gently; overmixing knocks out the air, so the biscuits come out flat and dense instead of light.

“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.

You might also like

Corn CakeCorn Cake90 recipesCorn Starch CakeCorn Starch Cake89 recipesWheat MuffinsWheat Muffins48 recipesCorn CakesCorn Cakes22 recipes