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Indian Batter Cakes

A yeast-raised batter of cornmeal and wheat flour, cooked on a griddle as thin cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Indian Batter Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Warm the milk and stir in the yeast and salt.

  2. Beat the eggs and mix them into the milk mixture.

  3. Gradually stir in the wheat flour and Indian meal.

  4. Cover the batter and let it rise for 4 to 5 hours, or mix it the night before if it's cold.

  5. If the batter is sour, dissolve 1 teaspoon of pearl-ash in water and stir it in, letting it sit for at least 30 minutes.

Cook

  1. Grease a baking iron and pour a ladleful of batter onto it.

  2. Cook until brown on one side, then turn to cook 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.

  1. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Flour and milk 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

Yeast
Ferments the batter so it rises and becomes light and slightly sour.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the cakes hold together when cooked.
Indian meal
Forms the main body of the cakes and gives them their corn flavour and texture.
Wheat flour
Adds gluten-based structure that helps the batter hold its shape while cooking.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the meal and flour and helps the batter brown.

The step that matters

Letting the batter rise fully. The yeast needs enough time to ferment the batter; under-rising leaves the cakes dense, while over-fermenting by a long wait can make the batter sour, which is why the recipe adds pearl-ash when it turns sour.

“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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