Name: Green Corn Griddles
Ingredients: 2 cups finely grated tender corn; 2 cups sweet milk; 3 eggs; ¼ teaspoon salt; 1 heaping teaspoon butter; ½ teaspoon baking soda; 1 teaspoon cream of tartar; ½ cup all-purpose flour (plus more as needed)

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 ↓

Green Corn Griddles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

Warm the milk.
Beat the eggs.
Cream the butter and add it to the corn along with the salt.
Mix the baking soda and cream of tartar with ½ cup of flour, then stir into the mixture.
Add more flour until the batter reaches a griddle batter consistency.

Cook

Bake on a 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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,955 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,165 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Corn: Provides the main body and sweetness, with moisture that keeps the griddles tender.
Eggs: Bind the batter and add structure as the griddles set.
Flour: Builds the batter's structure so it holds together on the griddle.
Baking soda: Reacts with the cream of tartar to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Cream of tartar: Acidifies the batter so it reacts with the baking soda to help the griddles rise.
Milk: Adds moisture and richness, and helps the batter flow to a griddle consistency.

The step that matters

Adding flour to griddle batter consistency. Too little flour makes thin batter that spreads and cooks unevenly, while too much makes dense, tough griddles. Adding flour gradually and checking the consistency keeps the batter pourable yet thick enough to hold its shape.

“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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Green Corn Griddles