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Feathery Flapjacks

A cornmeal and wheat flour pancake made with sour cream, eggs, and baking soda, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,373 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Feathery Flapjacks

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the cornmeal, wheat flour, baking powder, salt, sour cream, baking soda, and eggs.

  2. Add cold water gradually until you achieve a thin batter consistency.

Fry the pancakes

  1. Heat a pancake griddle over high heat and add plenty of fat.

  2. Pour batter onto the griddle and fry 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. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Wheat + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

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

  4. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Yellow cornmeal
Forms the bulk of the pancake and gives it its grainy texture and corn flavour.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tang, and reacts with the baking soda to help the pancakes rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Baking powder
Provides additional leavening so the pancakes rise and stay light.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the pancakes.

The step that matters

Adding the cold water gradually. Cornmeal absorbs liquid slowly and batter thickens as it sits, so adding water a little at a time lets you reach a thin, pourable consistency without overloading it. Too much water at once can make the pancakes thin and fragile.

“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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