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Batter Cakes

A yeast-leavened batter cake made with cornmeal, wheat flour, milk, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Batter Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine milk, white cornmeal, and wheat flour in a bowl to make a light batter.

  2. Add yeast and salt, mix well, and cover with a cloth.

  3. Let the batter rise overnight.

Finish and bake

  1. In the morning, add melted butter and baking soda dissolved in hot water, and mix well.

  2. Bake the batter in a preheated oven until golden brown.

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 + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Wheat + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Yeast
Ferments the batter so it rises overnight and becomes airy.
White cornmeal
Forms the bulk of the batter and gives the cake its body and texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter's acidity to produce gas, adding extra lift.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness, tenderness and browning.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the cornmeal and wheat flour into a batter.

The step that matters

Letting the batter rise overnight. Yeast needs time and a covered, undisturbed batter to ferment and build the gas bubbles that give the cake its lift. Rising too short a time leaves the cake 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.

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