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Drop Cakes

Cornmeal cakes fried from a batter of cornmeal, milk or water, salt, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Scald the cornmeal with milk or water.

  2. Add salt and beaten egg, mixing well.

Cook

  1. Drop spoonfuls into hot lard and fry until golden brown.

  2. Alternatively, drop onto a griddle and cook 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. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Coffee + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,239 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Forms the body of the cake and sets as it cooks, giving a firm, grainy texture.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps hold the cakes together while they cook.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the scalded cornmeal, and helps browning through its sugars.

The step that matters

Scald the cornmeal. Hot liquid swells the starch in the cornmeal before the egg is added, so the batter softens and binds well. Adding cold liquid without scalding leaves the grains hard and the cakes gritty.

“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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