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Dessert

Corn Meal Batter Cakes

A batter of cornmeal, buttermilk, eggs, and baking soda, cooked on a greased griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Buttermilk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Corn Meal Batter Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Sift the corn meal well.

  2. Beat the baking soda into the buttermilk until it foams.

  3. Stir the corn meal into the mixture.

  4. Add the beaten egg yolks and salt.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg white.

  6. Ensure the batter is thin and well mixed.

Cook

  1. Bake on a well-heated and greased 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. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Corn meal
Forms the body of the pancakes and gives them their grainy, sturdy texture.
Buttermilk
Provides the liquid and acidity that reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter together.
Egg white
Folded in whipped to add air, lightening the pancakes.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg white. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the egg white intact. Stirring vigorously would deflate it, leaving the pancakes denser and flatter.

“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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