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 ↓
Breakfast Cakes
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.
Make the batter
In a bowl, mix 1 cup of cornmeal with 2 cups of water and a pinch of salt.
Add 1 teaspoon of baking powder, 1 cup of milk, and 2 tablespoons of melted butter.
Stir until smooth and let the batter rest for 10 minutes.
Cook the cakes
Heat a griddle over medium heat and grease lightly.
Pour ¼ cup of batter onto the griddle for each cake.
Cook until bubbles form on the surface, then flip and cook until golden brown.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cornmeal
- Forms the main structure and gives the cakes their grainy texture.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas in the batter, helping the cakes rise and become light.
- Milk
- Adds moisture and richness, and helps the cakes brown on the griddle.
- Butter
- Adds fat for flavour and tenderness, and helps the cakes brown.
The step that matters
Cook over medium heat until bubbles form before flipping. Medium heat cooks the centre through while the outside browns evenly. Flipping too early, before bubbles set the surface, can tear the cakes and leave the inside raw.
“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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