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Dessert

Green Corn Cakes

A simple batter of grated green corn, flour, milk, butter, egg, salt, and pepper baked or fried into cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Green Corn Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C) or heat oil in a skillet for frying.

Make and cook the cakes

  1. In a bowl, mix the grated corn, flour, milk, melted butter, egg, salt, and pepper until combined.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a buttered baking pan or into the skillet.

  3. Bake for 10-15 minutes or fry until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve warm, great for breakfast.

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. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Grated green corn
Provides the main bulk and sweet corn flavour of the cakes.
All-purpose flour
Gives the batter structure so the cakes hold their shape while cooking.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a spoonable consistency.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the cakes brown.
Egg
Binds the batter together and adds structure as it sets.

The step that matters

Dropping the batter into the hot pan or oven. Cooking the spoonfuls in properly heated oil or a buttered pan gives a golden crust. Starting with a cold pan can cause the cakes to spread, stick and cook unevenly.

“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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