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Corn Griddle Cakes

A thin batter of cornmeal, flour, and eggs cooked on a greased griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Corn Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine sweet milk, beaten eggs, and salt.

  2. In another bowl, mix cornmeal, flour, and baking powder.

  3. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture to form a thin batter.

Cook

  1. Preheat a griddle and grease it with butter.

  2. Pour batter onto the griddle and cook until golden brown on both sides.

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add richness and structure to the cakes.
Cornmeal
Provides the main body and corn flavor of the griddle cakes.
Flour
Adds structure so the cakes hold their shape when cooked.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lightens the batter and helps the cakes rise.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the dry ingredients and adds moisture and tenderness.

The step that matters

Cook until golden brown on both sides. The batter is thin and the griddle must be hot enough to set the cakes quickly. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction on the surface, so cooking too cool or flipping too early leaves them pale, doughy, or tearing.

“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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