Name: Delicious Meat Cakes
Ingredients: 1 egg; 1 pint milk; ¼ teaspoon salt; ½ cup Kingford's corn starch; 1 cup all-purpose flour; chopped meat

Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Delicious Meat Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

In a bowl, beat the egg and mix in the milk and salt.
Add the corn starch and flour to create a smooth batter.

Cook

Preheat a griddle over medium heat.
Pour a spoonful of batter onto the griddle.
Place a spoonful of chopped meat on top of the batter.
Cover with another spoonful of batter.
Cook until the first side is browned, then flip and brown the other side.

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 + corntop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,955 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,165 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Corn + meattop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together414 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Egg: Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets.
All-purpose flour: Provides the main structure of the batter so the cakes hold together.
Corn starch: Gives the batter a smooth, tender texture and helps it set.
Milk: Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a pourable consistency.

“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.