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Annie's Corn Cakes

Corn cakes made from a batter of egg, sour milk, flour, cornmeal, baking soda, and salt, boiled then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Annie's Corn Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the egg, sour milk, baking soda, salt, flour, and enough cornmeal to create a batter that is not too stiff.

Make the mush

  1. In a large pot, add salt to the boiling water and gradually stir in enough cornmeal to make it quite thick.

  2. Boil the mixture slowly for one hour, stirring often and beating well to ensure it is light and smooth.

Fry and serve

  1. To fry, let the mixture cool, then cut it into thin slices and fry in a mixture of lard and butter.

  2. Serve with cream, milk, butter, or syrup.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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

Egg
Binds the batter so the cakes hold together.
Sour milk
Supplies moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to lighten the batter.
Flour
Adds structure to the batter alongside the cornmeal.
Cornmeal
Forms the thick base that gives the cakes their body and texture.

The step that matters

Boiling the cornmeal mixture slowly for one hour. Cornmeal thickens and can scorch or stick on the bottom of the pot, so it needs frequent stirring over gentle heat. Thorough beating keeps it smooth, and the long cook gelatinises the starch so the mush sets firm enough to slice and fry.

“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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