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Dessert

Indian Drop Cakes

A quick baked cake made from Indian meal, eggs, butter, salt, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Indian Drop Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Scald the Indian meal thoroughly.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and enough milk until the mixture can drop from a spoon.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls onto a baking pan or into gem pans.

  2. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Indian meal
Forms the body of the cakes and sets as it cooks, giving them structure.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help the cakes set and hold their shape while baking.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a drop consistency.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the cakes brown and taste fuller.

The step that matters

Adding milk until the batter drops from a spoon. Too little milk leaves a stiff batter that will not drop cleanly, while too much makes the cakes spread thin and dense. The cornmeal absorbs liquid as it sits, so the consistency needs judging by eye rather than by the measure alone.

“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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