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 Cakes
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
Combine grated corn, crushed soda crackers, milk, salt, and sugar in a bowl.
Mix until well combined.
Fry
Heat butter or lard in a frying pan over medium heat.
Spoon the mixture into the pan and fry until golden brown on both sides.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Corn + milktop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,955 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
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Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,345 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
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Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
- Corn
- Provides the main bulk and sweet corn flavor of the cakes.
- Soda crackers
- Absorb moisture and help bind the grated corn into a cohesive batter.
- Milk
- Adds moisture and softens the crackers so the batter spreads and cooks evenly.
- Butter or lard
- Conducts heat into the batter and promotes browning on the surface.
The step that matters
Spoon the mixture into the pan and fry until golden brown on both sides. The batter is loose and moist, so it needs enough fat and steady medium heat to set and form a crust before flipping. Flipping too early can make the cakes break apart, while too low heat leaves them pale and soggy inside.
“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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