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Green Corn Cakes

A savory cake made from grated sweet corn, milk, butter, salt, pepper, and optional egg, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Green Corn Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine grated sweet corn, milk, drawn butter, salt, black pepper, and egg if using in a bowl.

  2. Heat butter in a skillet over medium-high heat.

Fry

  1. Drop the mixture by the tablespoon into the hot butter.

  2. Fry for 10 to 20 minutes, turning 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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

  4. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Grated sweet corn
Provides the main body and sweet corn flavour of the cakes.
Egg
Helps bind the corn mixture so the cakes hold together while frying.
Drawn butter
Carries the frying and adds richness and browning to the cakes.
Milk
Adds moisture so the batter is soft enough to drop by spoonfuls.

The step that matters

Frying until golden brown. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction at the surface, which needs steady medium-high heat and dry surfaces. Too little heat steams the cakes pale and soggy, while too much heat scorches the outside before the centre sets.

“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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