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Oornmeal Pancakes

A pancake made with white flour, cornmeal, sour milk, eggs, sugar, salt, butter, baking soda, and water.

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 ↓

Oornmeal Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the white flour, cornmeal, sour milk, egg yolk, sugar, and salt.

  2. In a separate bowl, combine melted butter, egg white, baking soda, and a little water.

  3. Add the wet mixture to the dry ingredients and stir until combined.

Cook

  1. Cook on a hot griddle 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. Flour + milktop 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

White flour
Provides the main structure of the batter.
Cornmeal
Adds texture and a slightly grainy bite to the pancakes.
Sour milk
Supplies moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to make the pancakes rise.
Egg white
Adds structure and lift to the batter.

The step that matters

Cook on a hot griddle until golden brown on both sides. Heat must be high enough to set the batter quickly and brown the surface; if the griddle is too cool, the pancakes spread, turn pale, and absorb grease instead of forming a crisp, golden crust.

“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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