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Corn Meal Griddle Cakes

A batter of cornmeal, butter, eggs, and sour milk is cooked on a griddle to make griddle cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Corn Meal Griddle Cakes

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine corn meal, melted butter, salt, eggs, and sugar.

  2. Add sour milk gradually until a batter forms.

  3. If using baking soda, add a small amount and adjust with vinegar if necessary.

Cook

  1. Heat a griddle and pour batter to form cakes.

  2. 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + milktop 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 + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Corn meal
Forms the main body of the cakes, giving them their grainy structure and flavor.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the cakes.
Sour milk
Moistens the batter and adds tang, working with baking soda when used.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk to lighten the batter and help the cakes rise.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and helps the cakes brown on the griddle.

The step that matters

Adding baking soda. Baking soda reacts with acid in the sour milk to produce gas that lightens the batter. Too much leaves a soapy, bitter taste, so add it in small amounts and use vinegar to correct excess, as the record advises.

“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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