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Dessert

Corn Batter Cakes

A batter of sour milk, eggs, flour, cornmeal, lard, and baking soda baked on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Corn Batter Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Separate the eggs and beat the whites until stiff.

  2. In a bowl, combine sour milk, baking soda, lard, salt, and flour.

  3. Add cornmeal until the batter is thick enough to bake.

Cook

  1. Fold in the beaten egg whites just before baking.

  2. Cook on a hot griddle 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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Eggs
Whipped whites lighten the batter and add lift and a tender structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acidity to produce gas that makes the cakes rise.
Sour milk
Supplies the liquid and acidity that activates the baking soda.
Flour
Provides the starch and protein that give the cakes their body.
Cornmeal
Thickens the batter and gives the cakes a grainy, hearty texture.
Lard
Adds fat for tenderness and helps the cakes brown on the griddle.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites just before baking. Whipped egg whites trap air that gives lift. Folding gently preserves those bubbles, while overmixing or waiting too long lets the foam collapse and the cakes turn out flat and 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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