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Dessert

Southern Griddle Cakes

A cornmeal batter cooked on a griddle to make Southern griddle cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Southern Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the sour milk with baking soda and let it foam.

  2. Combine the foamed mixture with corn meal, eggs, and salt.

Cook the cakes

  1. Preheat a griddle until hot and grease it well.

  2. Pour the batter onto the griddle to form cakes.

  3. 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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

  3. Corn + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

White corn meal
Provides the main body and structure of the cakes.
Sour milk
Supplies moisture and acidity that react with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acidity to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the cakes.

The step that matters

Letting the sour milk foam with baking soda. The soda and acid must react before the batter goes on the griddle, since that reaction releases the gas that makes the cakes rise. Waiting for the foam to form gives the lift the recipe depends on.

“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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