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Dessert

Cornmeal Griddle Cakes

A batter of flour, cornmeal, baking powder, salt, sugar, egg, milk, and butter cooked on a griddle.

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 ↓

Cornmeal Griddle Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix and sift the flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt.

  2. Gradually add the cornmeal to the boiling water; cook for 5 minutes and let cool.

Make the batter

  1. Add the beaten egg, milk, and melted butter to the mixture.

  2. Combine with the flour.

Cook

  1. Cook on a griddle as you would for Sour Milk Griddle Cakes.

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

Cornmeal
Gives the cakes a coarser texture and a slightly grainy bite.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure to the cakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cakes rise and turn light.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps the cakes brown on the griddle.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid so the flour hydrates into a pourable batter.

The step that matters

Cooking the cornmeal in boiling water. Adding cornmeal to boiling water must be done gradually so no lumps form. Cooking it for the full 5 minutes softens the grains, which reduces grittiness and gives a smoother batter.

“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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