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Dessert

Corn Meal Mush Batter Cakes

A batter cake made from cornmeal mush, flour, eggs, baking powder, and salt, fried on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,165 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Corn Meal Mush Batter Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg yolks until light.

  2. Stir the cornmeal mush into the yolks.

  3. Add the flour and mix well.

  4. Season with salt and fold in the beaten egg whites.

  5. Finally, add the baking powder.

Cook

  1. Fry on a well-greased griddle over medium-high heat.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter, and beaten whites trap air that helps the cakes rise and stay light.
Cornmeal mush
Provides the main body and a tender, moist crumb in the batter.
Flour
Adds structure that helps the batter hold together during frying.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cakes rise and become lighter.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Beaten whites hold air that gives the cakes lift. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air in the batter so the cakes do not turn dense.

“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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