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Virginia Corn-cakes

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

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. In a large bowl, combine cornmeal and salt.

  2. Pour in half of the 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as the cakes set.
Cornmeal
Forms the body of the cakes, giving them their grainy texture.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, keeping the cakes tender and flavorful.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the cornmeal into a pourable batter and adds moisture.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture until smooth. Thorough mixing distributes the eggs, butter and milk evenly through the cornmeal so the batter has no lumps and the cakes cook uniformly.

“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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