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Indian Griddle Cakes

A griddle cake made from milk, cornmeal, eggs, flour, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Indian Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the milk, cornmeal, beaten eggs, flour, and salt, and mix well until smooth.

Cook

  1. Preheat a griddle or pan over medium heat.

  2. Pour batter onto the griddle and cook until golden brown on both sides.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Cornmeal
Provides the coarse grain body that gives the cakes their structure and texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help the cakes hold together while cooking.
Milk
Hydrates the cornmeal and supplies moisture for a tender batter.
Flour
Adds starch that helps the cakes set and hold their shape.

The step that matters

Cooking the cakes until golden brown on both sides. Medium heat lets the surface brown through the Maillard reaction while the centre cooks through. Heat that is too high browns the outside before the batter sets, leaving it raw 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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