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Virginia Waffles

A waffle made with cornmeal, flour, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, baking powder, and salt, cooked in a waffle iron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Virginia Waffles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cook the cornmeal in boiling water for 20 minutes.

  2. Add the milk, sifted dry ingredients, beaten egg yolks, melted butter, and stiffly beaten egg whites.

Cook

  1. Cook the mixture in a waffle iron 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.

  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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 whites
Stiffly beaten whites trap air, giving the waffles a light, airy lift.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the waffles rise and become tender.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter together.
White cornmeal
Cooked in boiling water, it adds a sturdy, slightly grainy texture.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the waffles brown.

The step that matters

Folding in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Whites hold air only if they are beaten stiff and then gently folded in; overmixing deflates them, leaving the waffles denser and less light.

“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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