Skip to main content
Dessert

Indiana Batter Cakes

A cornmeal batter cake made with lard, baking soda, and water, baked on a griddle and served with butter or molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,847 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Indiana Batter Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Sift cornmeal into a bowl.

  2. Add lard or drippings.

  3. Dissolve baking soda or saleratus in a little warm water and add to the mixture.

  4. Mix in cold water to form a soft dough.

  5. Gradually add warm water until the batter is of moderate consistency.

  6. Stir the batter well for 30 minutes.

Bake and serve

  1. Heat a griddle over the fire and bake the batter like buckwheat cakes.

  2. Serve hot with butter or molasses.

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. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Yellow cornmeal
Forms the main body of the cakes and gives them their structure and corn flavor.
Lard or drippings
Adds fat that tenderizes the cakes and carries flavor.
Baking soda or saleratus
Reacts to lighten the batter so the cakes rise and become tender when baked.

The step that matters

Stir the batter well for 30 minutes. Long stirring keeps the cornmeal evenly hydrated and distributes the leavening, so the cakes bake up uniformly rather than streaked or dense.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes