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Dessert

Batter Cakes

A batter cake made with milk, cornmeal, wheat flour, yeast, salt, butter, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and wheat 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 ↓

Batter Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the milk, cornmeal, and wheat flour to create a light batter.

  2. Stir in the yeast and salt until well mixed.

  3. Cover the bowl with a cloth and let it rise overnight.

Finish and bake

  1. In the morning, add the melted butter and baking soda mixture, and mix well.

  2. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish and bake 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 + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Wheat + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

Yeast
Ferments the batter so it rises and becomes airy overnight.
Cornmeal
Provides the main body and structure of the cakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter's acidity to add lift and help browning.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richer flavour.
Milk
Hydrates the cornmeal and flour to form the batter.

The step that matters

Letting the batter rise overnight. Yeast needs time and warmth to ferment; rising under a covered bowl lets gas build up so the cakes turn out light. Adding the baking soda only after the rise keeps its lift from being lost early.

“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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