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Virginia Corn-cakes

A batter of cornmeal, sweet milk, eggs, butter, and salt cooked on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Corn-cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine cornmeal and salt in a large bowl.

  2. Pour in 2 cups of sweet milk and mix well.

  3. Add melted butter and beaten eggs, then stir in the remaining milk.

  4. Beat the mixture again until smooth.

Cook

  1. Grease a hot griddle with a piece of fat salt pork and pour batter onto the griddle to cook.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Forms the body of the cakes, giving them their grainy structure.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help the cakes set as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the batter.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the cornmeal into a pourable batter and keeps the cakes moist.

The step that matters

Beating the batter smooth. Cornmeal settles quickly, so unmixed pockets of dry meal can leave uneven, gritty spots in the cakes. Thorough beating distributes the meal evenly through the liquid before cooking.

“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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