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Dessert

Flannel Cakes

A yeast-leavened cornmeal cake baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Flannel Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine 1 quart of milk with enough corn meal to create a light batter.

  2. Add 4 tablespoons of yeast and ¼ teaspoon of salt, and mix well.

  3. Cover the mixture with a cloth and let it rise overnight.

Finish and bake

  1. Stir in 1 ounce of melted butter and 4 beaten eggs.

  2. Mix everything together thoroughly and bake 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Milk + eggtop 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

Yeast
Produces gas that makes the batter rise and become airy overnight.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the cakes hold together when baked.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the corn meal and forms the batter.
Corn meal
Forms the body of the batter and gives the cakes their grainy texture.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness, tenderness and browning on the cooking surface.

The step that matters

Letting the batter rise overnight. Yeast needs time to ferment the batter, producing gas that lightens the cakes. Cutting the rise short leaves them dense and flat, so the covered batter should be left undisturbed until it has risen fully.

“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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