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Corn-meal Flapjacks

Cornmeal flapjacks made with milk, cornmeal, flour, salt, eggs, and optional sugar or molasses, baked on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Corn-meal Flapjacks

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Dissolve a Fleischmann's Yeast Cake in warm milk.

  2. Add cornmeal, flour, and salt.

  3. In the morning, stir in the beaten eggs and sugar or molasses if desired.

  4. If the batter is too thin, sift in more flour.

Cook

  1. Bake on a hot griddle.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 cake (in the method)
Ferments the batter so the flapjacks rise and become light.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the batter as it sets.
Cornmeal
Gives the flapjacks their coarse texture and corn flavor.
All-purpose flour
Provides gluten-based structure and adjusts the batter's thickness.

The step that matters

Check the batter consistency before cooking. If the batter is too thin, the flapjacks will spread and turn out flat and tender rather than holding their shape. Sifting in more flour thickens it so the batter holds its shape on the griddle.

“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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