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-meal Batter Cakes
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the batter
Dissolve the baking soda in a small amount of hot water.
In a bowl, mix the sour milk, beaten eggs, salt, and dissolved baking soda.
Gradually add enough sifted cornmeal to create a thin batter.
Cook and serve
Heat a griddle over a high flame and pour the batter to form cakes.
Cook until golden brown, then butter each cake immediately and keep warm until serving.
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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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 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
- Sour milk
- Provides acidity that reacts with the baking soda to help the cakes rise.
- Eggs
- Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the cakes.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the sour milk's acidity to produce carbon dioxide, lifting the cakes.
- Cornmeal
- Forms the body of the batter, giving the cakes their grainy texture.
- Lard or butter
- Adds fat for richness and tenderness, and butter on the cooked cakes adds flavor.
The step that matters
Cook until golden brown. The griddle must be hot enough to brown the cakes, which builds flavor through browning reactions. Cooking too cool leaves them pale and gummy inside, while cooking too hot can scorch the outside before the center sets.
“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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